Graduation Date: June 2011
Degree(s): M.S. Civil and Environmental Engineering Atmosphere/Energy; B.S. Aerospace Engineering Sciences (University of Colorado)

Chris worked on a number of different projects while at RMI. His first project was helping to write the summary report for the Solar Balance of Systems Charrette. The Charrette was designed to bring players from across the solar value chain together in an attempt to drive out costs and reduce the price of PV systems. He performed research on some of the subjects that were touched at the Charrette, but were not fully understood: specifically, how wind forces affect PV support structures and how standardization and mass production can reduce costs.

Chris’ other main project was the Next Generation Utility (NGU) Initiative, the goal of which is to provide a roadmap for getting 80% of the electricity in the US from renewable sources by 2050. He performed a wide variety of tasks for NGU, cinching up some areas where more research was required. He determined the potential for United States Waste Heat Recovery as a supply technology and categorized it by state. Additionally, his research on lifetimes, retirements and decommissioning costs for traditional supply technologies (coal, nuclear, etc.), will hopefully help make the case that renewables are often the better long term investment for utilities. His final NGU task was to determine the “hidden costs” for all electricity sources. The hope was to strip out all subsidies and other support to compare the costs of all supply technologies on an even playing field.

“The time I spent at RMI was incredibly valuable to my professional development. The fact that I didn’t get buried into one project was very important to me. As a relative newbie to energy, I like that I got to touch a lot of different topics, learning about each as I went along. RMI is a very collaborative place, and I was able to learn about what other interns were researching, as well as what other groups at The Institute were doing. I feel incredibly fortunate to have had the opportunity to work at RMI.”

“Chris’ work is integral to our quantitative modeling work for the NGU research initiative.”

“The MAP Fellowship is a concentrated pool of talent that far exceeds the quality of applicants that we get from RMI’s conventional hiring process.”