Gordon Bauer

Nia Novella Jones

A recent grad­u­ate of North­east­ern Uni­ver­sity with a B.S. in Indus­trial Engi­neer­ing with minor in Law & Pub­lic Policy.

I intend to research the inter­sec­tion of renew­able energy tech­nol­ogy, edu­ca­tion, and specif­i­cally prison edu­ca­tion pro­grams focused on STEM. Ulti­mately, my goal is to work with for­mally incar­cer­ated cit­i­zens as they pre­pare for re-​​entry into soci­ety. I aspire to work with renew­able energy projects in Africa to ful­fill my goal as devel­op­ing into a World Class “Energy” Engineer.

Raghavan, Shuba

Shuba is the co-​​director of the Cal­i­for­nia Energy Com­mis­sion spon­sored project

“ Engag­ing Com­mu­ni­ties in the Design of  Sus­tain­able Energy and Local­ized Futures  (SELF)”

Among her many pub­li­ca­tions are a num­ber that addresses the energy-​​access-​​affordability-​​climate nexus, including:

1. The Cal­i­for­nia Demand Response: Poten­tial Study, Phase 3; Brian F.Gerke,Giulia Gallo,Sarah J. Smith, Jingjing Liu, Peter Alstone, Shuba V. Ragha­van, Peter Schwartz, Mary Ann Piette, Rongxin Yin and Sofia Stensson. 
2. Trans­lat­ing cli­mate change and heat­ing sys­tem elec­tri­fi­ca­tion impacts on build­ing energy use to future green­house gas emis­sions and elec­tric grid capac­ity require­ments in Cal­i­for­nia; Brian Tar­roja, Feli­cia Chi­ang, Amir AghaK­ouchak, Scott Samuelsen, Shuba V. Ragha­van, Max Wei, Kaiyu Sunand Tianzhen Hong, Applied Energy, 2018, vol. 225, issue C, 522–534
3. Build­ing a Health­ier and More Robust Future: 2050 Low-​​Carbon Energy Sce­nar­ios for Cal­i­for­nia. Cal­i­for­nia Energy Com­mis­sion. Pri­mary Authors: Max Wei, Shuba Ragha­van, Patri­cia Hidalgo-​​Gonzalez, Con­tribut­ing Authors: Rodrigo Hen­riquez Auba, Dev Mill­stein, Madi­son Hof­facker, Rebecca Her­nan­dez, Eleonara Ruffini, Brian Tar­roja, Amir Agha Kouchak, Josiah John­ston, Daniel Kam­men, Julia Szi­nai, Colin Shep­ard, Anand Gopal, Kaiyu Sun, Tianzhen Hong, and Florin-​​Langer James. Pub­li­ca­tion Num­ber: CEC-​​500‑2019-​​033; March 2019
4. Path­ways to Decar­bonize Res­i­den­tial Water Heat­ing in Cal­i­for­nia, Shuba V Ragha­van, Max Wei, Daniel Kam­men, Energy Pol­icy 109 (2017) 441–451
5. Adop­tion of Solar Home Light­ing Sys­tems in India: What might we learn from Kar­nataka? Har­ish, Iychet­tira, Ragha­van, Kan­d­likar, Energy Pol­icy, Vol 62, Novem­ber 2013, pp –697–706.
6. Assess­ing the impact of the tran­si­tion to Light Emit­ting Diodes based solar light­ing sys­tems in India, San­tosh Har­ish, Shuba V Ragha­van, Milind Kan­d­likar, Gireesh Shri­mali, Energy for Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment, Vol­ume 17, Issue 4, August 2013, pp. 363–370.

Guangzhi Yin

Guangzhi is a PhD stu­dent in Energy Sys­tems Analy­sis at Tsinghua Uni­ver­sity.  He has bachelor’s degrees in Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing and in Man­age­ment from Tsinghua Uni­ver­sity.  He has been a vis­it­ing stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Bath and at the Israel Insti­tute of Technology.

His work is focused on the role of car­bon pric­ing and renew­able energy deploy­ment in China.

Guangzhi will be a vis­it­ing stu­dent at RAEL from Octo­ber 2019– July 2020.

 Cur­rent posi­tion:

Ph.D stu­dent in Elec­tri­cal Engi­neer­ing, Tsinghua University.

Dongran Liu

Don­gran Liu is a doc­toral stu­dent in the School of Eco­nomic and Man­age­ment at North China Elec­tric Power Uni­ver­sity.  She has research inter­ests in energy mar­kets, opti­miza­tion and risk man­age­ment, and dis­trib­uted energy resource planning.

At RAEL she is work­ing on mod­el­ing the future of the Chi­nese elec­tric power sys­tem using SWITCH.  She is part of a part­ner­ship with Euro­pean energy stor­age asso­ci­a­tions to exam­ine the mar­ket oppor­tu­ni­ties and car­bon ben­e­fits of the instal­la­tion of a range of energy stor­age technologies.

She will be a vis­it­ing stu­dent in RAEL from Octo­ber 2019 — August 2020.

Cur­rent posi­tion:

PhD stu­dent, North China Elec­tric Power University

Carrara, Samuel

Samuel Car­rara holds a Mas­ter Degree cum laude in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing (Major: Energy and Mechan­i­cal Plants) and a PhD in Energy and Envi­ron­men­tal Tech­nolo­gies, both from the Uni­ver­sity of Berg­amo.
After work­ing as an engi­neer in the gas tur­bine field, he is now junior researcher at FEEM. His main research inter­ests include renew­able ener­gies, sus­tain­able devel­op­ment, energy poli­cies, cli­mate and energy eco­nom­ics, advanced energy systems.

Ameli, Nadia

For my web­site, click here.

I am cur­rently work­ing as Senior Researcher Asso­ciate at UCL Insti­tute for Sus­tain­able Resources  where I lead the finance research area of the GREEN-​​WIN project. I focus on cli­mate and sus­tain­abil­ity finance poli­cies and gov­er­nance arrange­ments in order to con­tribute to over­com­ing finan­cial bar­ri­ers to mit­i­ga­tion and adaptation.

Before join­ing UCL, I worked for the OECD (Green Growth Unit, Eco­nom­ics Depart­ment) as Marie-​​Curie Fel­low, a two-​​year research grant funded by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion. At the OECD I analysed the effec­tive­ness of energy poli­cies to boost energy invest­ments in Europe. Prior to that, I worked for research cen­ters (FEEM and ICCG) and insti­tu­tions, includ­ing the Ital­ian Asso­ci­a­tion Energy Eco­nom­ics, where I was respon­si­ble for the Eco­nomic area (2009–2013).

Dur­ing my PhD, I was vis­it­ing scholar at the Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Energy Lab, UC Berke­ley under the super­vi­sion of Prof. Daniel Kam­men (2010–2011). I have worked on a range of novel ways to over­come the first-​​investment costs of energy effi­ciency and renew­able energy.

I got my PhD in Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion at Poly­tech­nic Uni­ver­sity of Marche and Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley (co-​​tutorship of doc­toral the­sis) with a focus on energy financ­ing pol­icy. My research inter­ests include renew­able and energy effi­ciency deploy­ment, cli­mate finance and energy pol­icy.

Shiraishi, Kenji

Kenji is a Ph.D. stu­dent with the Gold­man School of Pub­lic Pol­icy and a researcher in the Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Energy Lab­o­ra­tory. His cur­rent research inter­ests include empir­i­cal stud­ies and quan­ti­ta­tive mod­el­ing on the effec­tive­ness of renew­able energy poli­cies in devel­op­ing and devel­oped coun­tries for effec­tive deci­sion mak­ing. He is also inter­ested in devel­op­ing bet­ter tools for quan­ti­ta­tive assess­ment of the mul­ti­ple ben­e­fits of cli­mate poli­cies such as energy access, job cre­ation, and tech­nol­ogy devel­op­ment and transfer.

Kenji has more than 10 years of pro­fes­sional expe­ri­ences in the area of Japan’s and inter­na­tional envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies as a Deputy Direc­tor for Market-​​based Cli­mate Pol­icy of the Japan­ese Min­istry of the Envi­ron­ment, a Man­ag­ing Direc­tor of the Global Envi­ron­ment Cen­tre Foun­da­tion, etc. For exam­ple, he has spear­headed and man­aged var­i­ous gov­ern­ment energy incen­tive pro­grams for fund­ing energy effi­cient and renew­able energy projects in Japan as well as in South­east Asia and Africa under the Joint Cred­it­ing Mech­a­nism, bilat­eral coop­er­a­tion scheme between 14 coun­tries and Japan­ese Gov­ern­ment. He has also ini­ti­ated and led inter­na­tional coop­er­a­tion ini­tia­tives on envi­ron­men­tal pol­icy plan­ning, capac­ity build­ing, and tech­nol­ogy trans­fer focused on low-​​carbon city devel­op­ment with Japan­ese munic­i­pal­i­ties for Ho Chi Minh City (Viet­nam), Vien­tiane (Lao PDR), and other cities. He has nego­ti­ated at COP 18 and 19 of the UNFCCC as an inter­na­tional nego­tia­tor of the Japan­ese del­e­ga­tion on tech­nol­ogy trans­fer. Out­side of envi­ron­men­tal poli­cies, he is a cre­ator and a lead­ing trainer of pol­icy analy­sis train­ing courses for Japan­ese pol­icy professionals.

He holds an MPP with the Smolen­sky Prize (the Best Advanced Pol­icy Analy­sis (master’s the­sis)) from UC Berke­ley, for which Dan Kam­men was his APA advi­sor.  Kenji has a MEng and a BEng in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing from Uni­ver­sity of Tokyo.

The Eco-​​Block Project

Man­age­ment team: Har­ri­son Fraker (Co-​​PI), Daniel Kam­men (PI), Anthony Nahas (Project Consultant)

Research Moti­va­tion

1. How to make mil­lions of old, inef­fi­cient homes part of a clean-​​air, low-​​carbon & low resource-​​use future?
2. How can block-​​scale solu­tions enable bet­ter climate-​​change adap­ta­tion & response strate­gies than indi­vid­ual, home solutions?
3. How do you get block-​​scale inhab­i­tant buy-​​in, and sup­port from util­i­ties, stage agen­cies and the clean­tech sector?

Hypoth­e­sis:

• The block-​​scale is con­sid­er­ably more effi­cient & cost-​​effective than the indi­vid­ual house-​​scale in achiev­ing resource effi­cien­cies, and takes advan­tage of emerg­ing energy gen­er­a­tion leg­is­la­tion and infor­ma­tion systems.

Pre­sump­tion:

• The block-​​scale aggre­gates the flows across mul­ti­ple units, enabling greater effi­cien­cies and economies of scale

EcoBlock Project:

• Test & bench­mark results in real-​​time, with true case-​​control capac­ity via a sister-​​block.

Urban Block Re-​​Purposing

Design Objec­tive: Social & Tech­no­log­i­cal POV

1. peo­ple + energy + water + waste­water ==>       low­er­ing resource end-​​use in the built environment

1. design & imple­ment a pilot around neigh­bor­hood engagement
2. demon­strate effi­cient, func­tion­ing block-​​scale energy, water & waste­water treatment-​​and-​​reuse plat­form & retro­fit process
3. pro­to­type & blue­print to repli­cate, improve & scale-​​up.

Design ele­ments for resource-​​use efficiencies:

1. Block-​​scale retro­fit: opti­mized inte­gra­tion & operation
2. com­mu­nal solar & smart grid è elec­tric­ity, stor­age & EVs
3. com­mu­nal waste re-​​use è bio-​​methane for cook­ing load, irri­ga­tion & com­post for local, sus­tain­able food systems
4. Home-​​scale retro­fit: whole-​​house energy + water solutions
5. weath­er­iza­tion, EE appli­ances + light­ing, smart controls
6. grey-​​water re-​​use + water-​​conserving fixtures
7. Insti­tu­tional path­ways: reg­u­la­tory maneu­ver­ing & financing

Urban Block Re-​​Purposing

Elec­tric­ity

Water

Fund­ing Needs

• $8M over two/​three years, from mul­ti­ple fund­ing sources (cor­po­rate, phil­an­thropic, etc.):

- Micro­grid + stor­age $1.5 mil­lion /​ Waste-​​water $.9 mil­lion /​ Water $.3 mil­lion /​ Contingency$.3 million

Moti­va­tions:

• Rad­i­cally improve build­ing per­for­mance (energy+water) as urban adap­tive response to cli­mate change
• Social response & inte­gra­tion of community’s wishes
• Legal & reg­u­la­tory path­ways & advocacy
• Finan­cial inno­va­tions based on ‘avoided costs’
• New ways to com­mer­cial­ize green water sys­tems, clean energy tech­nolo­gies, microgrid–storage, DR, sys­tems con­trols, FDD, behav­ior ana­lyt­ics, etc.

Upcom­ing UCTV film to fea­ture the EcoBlock, with com­ments from:

Tim Schae­fer | Deputy Trea­surer, Pub­lic Finance | Office of Cal­i­for­nia State Trea­surer John Chi­ang |

Fingerman, Kevin

http://​www2​.hum​boldt​.edu/​e​n​v​i​r​o​n​m​e​n​t​/​f​a​c​u​l​t​y​-​a​n​d​-​s​t​a​f​f​/​d​r​.​-​k​e​v​i​n​-​f​i​n​g​e​r​man

My research is dri­ven by an inter­est in the broad-​​based envi­ron­men­tal and social impacts of energy tech­nolo­gies and poli­cies. This work seeks to make explicit the trade-​​offs that are often present between energy secu­rity, cli­mate, and other impor­tant social and envi­ron­men­tal objec­tives. In par­tic­u­lar, I have worked on issues at the water/​energy nexus, eval­u­at­ing the “water foot­prints” of a range of energy tech­nolo­gies. Water and energy are inex­tri­ca­bly linked, with elec­tric­ity gen­er­a­tion sec­ond only to agri­cul­ture in total global water with­drawals. This con­nec­tion is par­tic­u­larly acute for bioen­ergy, as it is by far the most water-​​intensive of all energy types. My research has employed life cycle assess­ment (LCA), agro-​​climatic mod­el­ing, and GIS tools to show that bio­fu­els rou­tinely require sev­eral orders of mag­ni­tude more water than petro­leum fuels while often pro­vid­ing only mod­est cli­mate benefit.

I approach my research with an eye toward imple­men­ta­tion. This has led me to work with Cal­i­for­nia reg­u­la­tory agen­cies on fuel pol­icy for­mu­la­tion and to serve as vice-​​chair of the Geneva-​​based Round­table on Sus­tain­able Bio­fu­els. Prior to com­ing to HSU, I worked in Rome for the United Nations Food and Agri­cul­ture Orga­ni­za­tion. While there, I pro­vided sup­port to the gov­ern­ments of Indone­sia and Colom­bia in eval­u­at­ing the envi­ron­men­tal and social impacts of their bio­fuel indus­tries, and in for­mu­lat­ing poli­cies to address those impacts.