Congratulations to ERG alumna Kripa Jagannathan for receiving the Early Career Development Grant from Earth & Environmental Sciences (EEPS)! Kripa specializes in the field of climate change adaptation and climate-resilient planning. EEPS describes her most recent research being focused on “improving the ‘usability’ of climate science, and enabling science-based adaptation decision-making for water resources management and agricultural planning.”

Congratulations to ERG PhD student Valeri Vasquez upon becoming a 2021 Microsoft Research PhD Fellow! This two-year fellowship is for PhD students at North American universities pursuing research aligned to the research areas carried out by Microsoft Research. Vasquez’s research entails studying the “environmental drivers, economic impacts of infectious disease… and the use of genetic-based interventions, including CRISPR-Cas9 systems, to control mosquito-borne illness.”

ERG adjunct professor Margaret Torn was featured in EurekAlert for her contributed work on a carbon dioxide removal (CDR) primer. The article cites the research as a valuable resource on CDR technologies and policies, and how such strategies can help create a serious plan to address climate change.

“Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are already 50% over historic natural levels – 270 ppm (parts per million) in pre-industrial times vs 414 ppm today,” Torn stated. “To slow climate change and avoid its worst impacts, climate scientists tell us that we need to restore atmospheric CO2 concentrations to about 350 ppm or less. To do that, we need CDR technologies and policies to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere.”

ERG professor Dan Kammen calls for a worldwide end to the subsidization of oil and gas companies, explaining how such subsidies halters our progress of living, working, and producing goods in a CO-2 neutral way.

“The amount of subsidies available for these industries is much higher than the annual investment in the development of sustainable energies,” Kammen states.

Current ERG PhD student Julia Szinai, alumnus Ranjit Deshmukh, ERG professor Dan Kammen, and assistant adjunct professor Andrew Jones were recently featured by UCSB for their leading research in “Power, Water and Climate”. Working with researchers from UC Santa Barbara and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, they developed “a framework evaluating the impacts of climate change on California’s water and energy systems”.

Recently, President-elect Joe Biden has nominated UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy (GSPP) faculty member Jennifer Granholm to lead the U.S. Department of Energy and Haas School of Business Professor Emeritus Janet Yellen to serve as secretary of treasury. Two campus alumni are also expected to serve within the administration, with Alejandro Mayorkas selected to lead the Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, and Adewale Adeyemo picked for deputy treasury secretary.

ERG professor Dan Kammen expressed enthusiasm for the candidates in multiple news sources, stating that “The Department of Energy is going to be central to almost everything in the Biden-Harris plan, from energy transformation to re-entering the Paris Climate Accords. We’re also going to need a huge infusion of attention and effort to be put into creating jobs. That fits Jennifer Granholm to a T. I’m just so impressed that they made this choice. I think she’s ideal for the job at this time.”

Read the Berkeley News article on Jennifer Granholm here, the San Francisco Chronicle article here, and the Daily Californian article on all four Berkeley scholars here.

In the latest fall 2020 issue of Breakthroughs magazine, ERG professor Isha Ray was interviewed on her work in social equity and inclusive activism, and ERG PhD student Valeri Vasquez was featured on her project of using computational models to research how genetic technologies might work as public health interventions.

“Equity and inclusion have always motivated me, in both research and teaching, and I’ve served as an equity adviser in my department for many years,” Ray states in her interview. “My field research has always focused on social justice, particularly in communities that are neglected and marginalized and with people struggling to be included as full citizens. You would think that, in this century, clean, affordable drinking water wouldn’t be such a huge ask, but apparently it is.”

ERG Professor Dan Kammen was recently interviewed in The Daily Californian, where he discussed what the fight against climate change would look like in 2021 and what he anticipates for President-elect Joe Biden’s administration.

“California’s always had a very aggressive plan,” Kammen said. “We’re now in a position where 10 states have joined California and have targets of zero-carbon economies by mid-century, so President-elect Biden is working with a much better deck.”

Congratulations to ERG students Isa Ferrall, Arthur Dias, Sean Kelly and Jessica Craigg for receiving the Berkeley Graduate Remote Instruction Grant! Each student will be awarded a stipend of $2,000 and a Certificate in Remote Instruction.

In a recent Sustainability Times article, ERG professor Dan Kammen explains how pandemic lockdowns resulted in historic drops in our CO2 emissions. Additionally, Kammen’s previous study on how exactly COVID-19 lowered said Co2 emissions was featured in a Berkeley News article, arguing that a move towards greater usage of electric-powered vehicles would “reduce the major greenhouse gas responsible for climate change and global warming”.

“The greatest reduction of emissions was observed in the ground transportation sector. Largely because of working from home restrictions, transport CO2 emissions decreased by 40% worldwide,” Kammen stated.

Read how the pandemic lockdowns decreased Co2 emissions here, and what this means for the future usage of electric vehicles here.