ENERGY TRANSITION HUB - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Analyst
- Consultant
- Researcher
- Environmental Consultant
Alan has worked in the sustainable energy and environment fields since the late 1970s for community groups, government and the private sector.
While working for the Victorian government in the 1980s, he helped develop and implement programs such as the Home Energy Advisory Service, public information and education, appliance energy labelling and mandatory building insulation regulations.
Since 1991, Alan has been an environmental consultant, and has been involved in building energy and environmental rating and regulation, green building projects, educational software, green appliance development, industrial and business energy and environmental management, and policy analysis in Australia and, more recently, the Asia-Pacific region.
Alan is a highly regarded analyst, consultant and commentator on sustainable energy and climate policy, and has written or peer reviewed many articles in specialist media such as The Conversation, Energy Policy and ReNew magazine, as well as other academic journals, chapters of books and major reports.
Alan was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2009 for his contribution to environmental and energy policy. He has also received a number of awards from industry associations and RMIT media awards.
Alison is currently visiting the Energy Transition Hub as a Fulbright Scholar.
Alison comes from a multidisciplinary background, drawing from economics, policy, and technical analysis to solve complex environmental problems. Her experiences range from laboratory research on emerging solar technologies at UC Berkeley to political advocacy work in California. Most recently, she was employed as a Consultant in San Francisco at Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc. where she evaluated variable energy generation interactions with the electric grid. Her major projects involved providing expertise on battery storage impacts and deployment for state regulators in California and New York.
For her Fulbright project, Alison will conduct a comparative study of renewable integration challenges in California and Australia, and the potential for overcoming them using energy storage technologies to moderate variable power generation. She hopes her findings will provide guiding principles for system-wide change that will further dialogue, promote collaboration, and advance action towards a greener future in both California and Australia.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor Ariel Liebman / Researcher
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor Carolyn Hendriks / Researcher
Job Titles:
- Changlong Wang / Researcher
Charlotte Plinke is a research intern, working with Professor John Wiseman on the labour implications of the transition away from coal.
Charlotte completed a Master of Science in Environmental Economics and Climate Change at the London School of Economics in 2019, a Master 1 in Econometrics and Statistics from the Toulouse School of Economics in 2018, and a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Humboldt University in 2017.
She has also worked as a research intern at Aurora Energy Research, Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC), and Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor David Byrne / Researcher
Dr Bumpus is a climate change solutions expert. Since 2002, he has worked in environmental communications, and the role of technology in climate change and sustainable development. Currently he is Senior Research Fellow at the School of Geography, Faculty of Science, with an ARC Fellowship on how incubators and accelerators are helping create clean energy entrepreneurs in Australia, the US and the EU. He is also a winner of Top 5 Under 40 Science Communicators at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and is a 2016 ABC Scientist in Residence.
Adrian completed his PhD in sustainable energy transitions at the University of Melbourne in 2020 and is now a Research Fellow with the Energy Transition Hub. He is currently researching the role of community renewable energy groups and projects in the transition to a low carbon future. Prior to this, he worked in innovation and corporate partnership roles with international development and environment organisations in Australia and the United Kingdom. With degrees in economics, law, development studies, and energy transitions, Adrian's core research interests focus on ways and means of accelerating shifts to more sustainable ways of meeting societal needs.
Dr Ali Arefi received a BSc (Honours), MSc, and PhD all in electrical engineering in 1999, 2001, and 2011, respectively. He has been a lecturer and Research Fellow in Queensland University of Technology (QUT) since 2012. During this time, he has developed an automated tool for sustainable investment strategy in electric distribution networks over large areas and long planning horizons for Energy Queensland Limited. He is a chief investigator in the awarded Discovery Project titled "Transition to Customer Response Driven Networks", which is funded $390k by Australian Research Council (ARC) in 2015 and ARENA project titled "Distributed Energy Resources Trials in Carnarvon", 2017. He has more than six years' experiences with electric distribution industry. He has been the consultant for 5 industry-funded research projects including evaluations of distributed generations and microgrids. He has also carried out energy audits and power quality analysis for more than 30 factories and electric distribution networks. Moreover, he has delivered many talks for industries in the field of energy efficiency and power quality.
Dr Arefi's expertise is mainly in the fields of:
Anita is the Hub's Science Coordintor. She has a PhD on climate governance from the University of Melbourne, a Masters in climate change from the Australian National University and an engineering degree, also from the ANU. She previously worked for the Australian Parliamentary Library providing research and analysis to Members and Senators of the Australian Parliament on climate change and renewable energy issues. Her research focusses on the governance of climate engineering initiatives.
Job Titles:
- Researcher
- Principal in the Energy Group at the Institute for Sustainable Futures
Chris Briggs is a Research Principal in the energy group at the Institute for Sustainable Futures and Technical Director, Business Renewables Centre. Recent projects include developing tools for and profiling Corporate Renewable Energy Power Purchase Agreements, renewable energy and demand-side flexibility, international employment modelling, just transition case studies and renewable energy jobs surveys for Australia. Chris has a combination of climate, energy and labour market expertise developed over 20 years of experience in policy, research and advocacy in Federal, State and City Governments, and university sector.
Job Titles:
- Researcher
- Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow
Dr Christian Downie is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow (2018-2021) and the Higher Degree Research Convenor in the School of Regulation and Global Governance at The Australian National University. He was previously a Vice Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of New South Wales. Christian has worked as a foreign policy advisor to the Australian Government's Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet and a climate policy advisor to the Department of Climate Change. Christian holds a PhD in international relations and political science from the Australian National University, having graduated from the University of Sydney with first class honours in economics. He has spent time teaching or researching at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the London School of Economics and Political Science and the University of Chulalongkorn, among others, and he has worked in policy think tanks in Canberra and Washington D.C. Christian is the author of more than 20 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters including publications in Global Environmental Politics, Energy Policy, International Affairs, and Third World Quarterly. His first book, The Politics of Climate Change Negotiations, was published in 2014.
Job Titles:
- Researcher
- Researcher in the Climate and Energy Policy Group at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research
https://www.pik-potsdam.de/members/chgamba/christian-gambardella(link is external)
Christian Gambardella is a post-doctoral researcher in the Climate and Energy Policy Group at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). His main field of research lies at the interface of applied energy, environmental and behavioral economics, using computational and econometric methods.
Much of Christian's work so far focused on the welfare and distributional effects of price responsive electricity demand in transforming electricity markets in the presence of climate and renewable policies. Currently, his main focus lies on analyzing the retail tariff choices by electricity consumers and on the welfare effects of measure to correct biased consumer decision-making. Moreover, he is conducting empirical research on the environmental benefits of electric vehicles as well as on the price and quantity effects of growing renewable generation in the German electricity market.
Christian received his PhD in economics from the Technical University Berlin in 2019. Before joining PIK as a PhD-Student in 2013, he graduated from the University of Cologne in economics and sociology, with a focus on dynamic macroeconomics and energy economics. His work has been published in Energy Economics, The Energy Journal and Nature Energy.
Christoph Feldhaus' research focuses on:
Experimental economics
Behavioral economics
Microeconomics
Social psychology
Dr Colin Scholes was among eight young scientists from the University of Melbourne have been awarded 2012 Young Tall Poppy Science Awards for Victoria . All winners are leaders in their field, breaking new ground with their innovation and discoveries. The Young Tall Poppy Science Awards aim to recognise early career researchers who have achieved significant research outcomes and have demonstrated their passion to engage with the community in science. Award winners will spend the next year engaging with teachers, school students, parents and the broader community around Victoria and across Australia as part of the Tall Poppy Campaign run by the Australian Institute of Policy and Science.
Dr Scholes was a successful recipient of this award for his work in Climate Change Mitigation . Dr Scholes is developing efficient filtering membranes to separate carbon from industry gases such as coal-fired power stations.
David Stern is a professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University. He is a research associate in CAMA and CCEP, and a participant in the Energy Change Institute. David is an energy and environmental economist, whose research focuses on the role of energy in growth and development and related environmental impacts including climate change. He is also interested in research assessment using meta-analysis and bibliometrics. David is currently the chief investigator for an ARC Discovery Project on "Energy Efficiency Innovation, Diffusion and the Rebound Effect" and is one of six theme leaders for a UK Department for International Development funded project on the topic of electricity and economic growth in low-income countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. He has published widely in economics and natural science journals including articles in Nature and the Journal of Economic Literature. He is an associate editor of Ecological Economics and PeerJ, a member of the editorial advisory panel for Nature Energy, the Energy Journal, and Open Economics, and was a lead author for the chapter on Drivers, Trends, and Mitigation in Working Group III's contribution to the IPCC's 5th Assessment Report. He was elected as a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 2016. David was previously an associate professor of economics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy NY and received his PhD from Boston University in 1994.
Dean Laslett has recently completed a PhD on renewable energy modelling for the SWIS grid in South Western Australia, which included simulation of wind power, solar PV, battery storage, solar thermal power with storage, and energy efficiency.
Dean is interested in energy balance modelling, visualisation, and developing common data standards so different models can use the same dataset.
Job Titles:
- Researcher
- Energy Systems Research Fellow
Dr Dylan McConnell is an energy systems research fellow at the University of Melbourne Climate & Energy College and researcher at the multi-institutional Energy Transition Hub. He has extensive experience in analysing the electricity sector in Australia. Dylan's work is focused on electricity infrastructure and governance, and the energy transition in liberalised electricity markets. He also specialises in operations research and the optimisation of electricity systems. His work is interdisciplinary and has been published in forums including the Journal of Energy Policy, the Journal of Applied Energy, the Electricity Journal, and the Journal of Environmental Sociology. His work can be found on The Conversation.
Kate holds an MSc in Environmental Technology from Imperial College London, and a BA from Latrobe University. For the past 10 years Kate has worked with environmental non-governmental organisations on forests, climate change and human rights, particularly the European Union's policy responses to forest governance reforms and illegal logging, and the development of the REDD+ mechanism (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) at the UNFCCC. She has been following the UN climate negotiations since 2009, and has published on equity and human rights, distributive climate justice, and illegal logging and trade. Kate completed her PhD in 2019, investigating the science-policy interface around terrestrial carbon science in international climate politics.
Job Titles:
- Dr. Rakibuzzaman Shah / Researcher
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- Dr. Sangeetha Chandra - Shekeran / Researcher / Work Package Leader
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- Dr. Ursula Fuentes Hutfilter / Researcher / Work Package Leader
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- Mentor / Associate Professor Paul Burke / Researcher
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- Adjunct Professor Howard Bamsey / Researcher
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- Mr. Michaja Pehl / Researcher
Job Titles:
- Mentor / Associate Professor Paul Burke / Researcher
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Board
- Member of the ChaiR of the Board
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor Sara Bice / Researcher