Expertise

Topics:  Sustainable Engineering, Engineering and Public Policy, Electric Power Systems, Green Design, Energy, Climate and Energy Decision Making, Energy Systems, Resilient Systems, Energy Policy, Life Cycle Analysis

Industries: Energy, Public Policy, Education/Learning

Dr. Paulina Jaramillo's past research has focused on life cycle assessment of energy systems with an emphasis on climate change impacts and mitigation research. As a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, she is involved in key multi-disciplinary research projects to better understand the social, economic and environmental implications of energy consumption and the public policy tools that can be used to support sustainable energy development and consumption. She is now the Co-Director of the Green Design Institute and has started pursuing research about infrastructure systems for global development.

Media Experience

Switch to EVs could save state and local governments up to $360 million, study says  — StateImpact
Paulina Jaramillo, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and wasn’t involved in the report, said the strategy of transitioning government fleets to EVs is reasonable. However, she pointed out the cost-savings could be reduced where more infrastructure for these vehicles is needed to be built.

Why the carbon capture subsidies in the climate bill are good news for emissions  — MIT Technology Review
Finally, the subsidies should spur the development of carbon dioxide pipelines and storage facilities that will be necessary to move and reliably sequester growing volumes of carbon dioxide in the coming decades, says Paulina Jaramillo, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University.

Why hasn’t Henry Ford’s ideal power grid become a reality?  — Popular Science
“What Ford described,” notes Paulina Jaramillo, codirector of the Green Design Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, “became the suburbs we developed in the middle of the last century, except the suburbs developed close to cities, not farms, and have massive negative externalities.” This is otherwise known as the sprawl–paving and building over open spaces like forests and fields, and driving up carbon emissions with more road transportation.

Hope Dims that the U.S. Can Meet 2030 Climate Goals  — Scientific American
EPA’s tools are better suited to regulating emissions from coal plants than gas plants, said Paulina Jaramillo, a professor who studies the power industry at Carnegie Mellon University.

Hydrogen may be a climate solution. There's debate over how clean it will truly be  — NPR
"I think hydrogen is crucial," says Paulina Jaramillo, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University and a co-author of a recent U.N. report on climate change. She says hydrogen can be a clean alternative for industries such as steel mills, fertilizer plants or shipping.