THE ENERGY AND RESOURCES GROUP SPRING 2019 COLLOQUIUM SERIES PRESENTS:
SPEAKER:
Juan Pablo Carvallo
PhD Candidate
Energy and Resources Group
University of California, Berkeley
DATE: Wednesday, May 1, 2019
TIME: 4:00-5:30pm
PLACE: 126 Barrows
TITLE: Mind the GAP: Bridging Strategies for Universal Energy Access
DESCRIPTION:
Over 1 billion people face energy poverty around the world, without access to modern, reliable, and affordable energy. The slow pace and high cost and environmental impacts of energy poverty alleviation is in part the result of relying on century-old planning, financing, and institutional paradigms to design and operate energy systems in low-income countries. My research aims to identify and frame the problems with electricity access in these regions and offer technical and institutional solutions that could be implemented by policy-makers. In this talk, I will present the Grid Access and Planning (GAP) model that I developed to propose new strategies to provide reliable and affordable electricity for underserved populations, with a case study of Kenya. I will wrap up by offering insights on a new institutional arrangement – the Utility of the Future – that aims to remove barriers, create incentives, and support the implementation of these new strategies.
BIO:
JP Carvallo is working on creating sustainable, affordable, and reliable future energy systems to end energy poverty in low income economies and to decarbonize power systems around the world. He is using the GAP model he developed for his dissertation to understand how distributed technologies challenge the way we have run power systems for over a century. In doing this, he is leading a team that is fleshing out the institutional, economic, technological, and financial underpinnings of the utility of the future in low income economies. During his PhD tenure JP developed long-term energy pathways and analysis for Chile, Kenya, and Uganda, and explored policy mechanisms for renewable energy adoption in Latin America. In parallel with his PhD studies, JP leads work on integrated resource planning and energy efficiency for the U.S. as a researcher at the Electricity Markets and Policy Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.