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Student Spotlight: Sam Arons
Student Spotlight Directory
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PHOTO/R. NORGAARD
ERG Masters candidate, Sam Arons.
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"Sustainability on Campus"
Sam Arons is a Master's Candidate in the Energy & Resources Group (ERG) at UC Berkeley. In addition to his academic interests, which include climate change and climate policy, sustainable transportation, and the institutionalization of sustainability, Sam is passionately involved in sustainability activities on campus. Using the knowledge gained through his research, coursework and interaction with fellow "ERGies", Sam has been working to integrate environmental principles into the university's academics and operations.
In 2006, Sam served as the Vice President of Students for a Greener Berkeley, during which time he worked with university administrators to adopt a campus recycled paper policy. His coursework for ERG Professor Daniel Kammen's "Energy and Society" dovetailed with this initiative, providing him the opportunity to write a policy memo related to the proposal. The policy was adopted in June of that year.
He also serves on UC Berkeley's Climate Protection Steering Committee, a group of students, faculty, staff, and administrators overseeing the university's greenhouse gas emissions inventory (called CalCAP) to develop a long-term strategy to significantly cut those emissions. Sam has drawn on his knowledge of climate science, environmental policy, and the engineering and economics of energy generation -- gained from courses like ERG Professor Alex Farrell's "Electric Power Systems" and Haas Business School Professor Severin Borenstein's "Energy Markets"-- to help Cal to reduce its emissions in the most cost-effective manner.
Additionally, Sam founded the Berkeley Sustainable Investing Collaborative (BSIC), an organization dedicated to working with campus administrators and the university's trustees to incorporate social and environmental considerations into UC Berkeley's investment practices. He pursued this goal in true ERG interdisciplinary style, presenting his work at a national policy conference and drawing together a diverse group of graduate and undergraduate students hailing from departments across campus including the College of Natural Resources, the Haas Business School, Industrial Engineering, Materials Science, and, of course, ERG. Discussions with the university are ongoing, and to date BSIC has successfully raised the issue to the trustees' attention.
In 2006, Sam was elected Co-Chair of the Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Sustainability (CACS), which serves as the hub for sustainability initiatives on campus. He and his Co-Chair are responsible for overseeing the committee's Sustainability Internships and the Chancellor's Green Fund Grant Program, and for organizing the annual Campus Sustainability Summit. This work has given Sam the opportunity to experience first-hand the processes by which sustainability is institutionalized in a large bureaucracy, and has heightened his academic interest in environmental policymaking and the long-term adoption of sustainability.
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PHOTO/DOE/NREL.
Sam is studying plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) as a policy tool for achieving greenhouse gas emission reductions.
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He is also a member of The Green Initiative Fund (TGIF) fee referendum committee, a group of students from across the university working to pass a $5/semester student fee increase in April 2007 that would raise $200,000/year for campus sustainability projects and student internships. Additionally, he has served as a Delegate to the Graduate Assembly and member of its Environmental Sustainability Committee, where he passed legislation in support of "greening" the PhD dissertation process.
Sam holds a BA in Physics from Williams College, where he analyzed the energy yield and visual impact of a local wind farm for his undergraduate thesis. After graduating, he spent a year in Casablanca, Morocco teaching math at an American school and learning Arabic, which he continues to study at Cal. For his Master's work at ERG, Sam is studying plug-in hybrid vehicles (PHEVs) as a policy tool for achieving cost-effective greenhouse gas emission reductions. After ERG he plans to work on energy and climate policy, and hopes to help our society one day achieve long-term sustainability.
2/28/07
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