AlumniPhD/MSc Rebekah Shirley

Rebekah Shirley is ERG alumni and for­mer Post-​​Doctoral Researcher at RAEL. She com­pleted her doc­toral stud­ies in the Energy and Resources Group in 2015. She also pre­vi­ously obtained a MSc. Energy and Resources (2011) and a MSc. Civil Engi­neer­ing at UC Berke­ley (2011). Her doc­toral research focused on decen­tral­ized renew­able energy tech­nolo­gies and design­ing inte­grated mod­el­ing frame­works to sup­port energy plan­ning in emerg­ing economies, with a focus on South­east Asia and island regions and now her scope has extended to sub-​​Saharan Africa, where she lives.

As a researcher at RAEL Rebekah has con­ducted fea­si­bil­ity stud­ies for energy alter­na­tives in Bor­neo and Laos, built the first car­bon emis­sions and green jobs impact cal­cu­la­tors in the Caribbean, devel­oped solu­tions to reduce the car­bon and water foot­prints of the hotel sec­tor in India, designed car­bon neu­tral emer­gency hous­ing for hur­ri­cane pre­pared­ness and cli­mate resilience in French Poly­ne­sia, explored the agriculture-​​water inter­sec­tion with Ful­bright Nexus Schol­ars in Nicaragua, and mod­eled least-​​cost power sys­tems for part­ners across Latin Amer­ica, South­east Asia and the Pacific. She has worked with insti­tu­tions like the National Renew­able Energy Lab­o­ra­tory (NREL), the U.S. Depart­ment of Energy (DOE) and USAID. Rebekah is a Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia Chancellor’s Fel­low and at UC Berke­ley has won grants from orga­ni­za­tions such as the DOE and the Rain­for­est Foun­da­tion that sup­port her work.

Rebekah is now the Chief Research Offi­cer at Power For All, a global edu­ca­tion and advo­cacy ini­tia­tive founded by energy access prac­ti­tion­ers to advance renew­able solu­tions for uni­ver­sal energy access, with focused cam­paigns in sub-​​Saharan Africa. For her work in build­ing the continent’s first decen­tral­ized energy research engine Rebekah was named Africa’s Out­stand­ing Young Leader in Energy 2018. Rebekah now lives and works in Nairobi, Kenya.

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Energy & Resources Group
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University of California
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