Amul Sathe worked with the NRDC to help understand national emissions targets, project green house gas reductions from the transportation sector, and analyze the benefits of plug in hybrid vehicles.

Amul helped examined the vehicle transportation sector in a project that aims to reduce the nation's emissions by 80% in 2050. He helped determine the effects of introducing new technologies in four areas: fuel economy, travel demand management, biofuels, and plug-in hybridization. Utilizing models for vehicle lifetime, technology penetration, and fuel cycle emissions, Amul quantified the potential carbon savings from different policy packages that aimed to achieve the aggressive 2050 target. He attended vehicle policy conferences and workshops to gain additional insight in potential mitigation technologies. The results showed the different combinations of technologies and policies to push them that are needed to achieve the 2050 target. Amul compiled his findings into a paper and presented the results to the NRDC Climate Center in Washington DC. The project as a whole will contribute to NRDC's understanding of the impacts of future technologies.

Amul also assisted in the NRDC's analysis on plug-in hybrid vehicles. He began development of a lifecycle cost model to calculate when the cost to operate a hybrid or plug in hybrid vehicle is lower than that of a conventional vehicle.

"This Fellowship is certainly a life changing experience... At the NRDC I had the chance to interact with passionate people dedicated to changing the world for the better. The feeling is extremely infectious and I was inspired to continue fighting the good fight against global warming."

"It really extended our analytical capacity. We have many needs on research topics which are basically at a grad student level. Amul went one step further by doing some valuable synthesis of the information."