Avery is a Senior Associate in RMI’s Carbon-Free Electricity practice, where she performs data analysis and energy modeling on the US electricity sector to facilitate the transition to a decarbonized energy future. Specifically, Avery’s work explores the transition of the utility business model from gas and fossil fuels toward renewable resource mixes aligned with the climate imperative and analyzes low-to-moderate income customers served in each utility service territory. Avery is passionate about exploring how energy equity metrics can play a larger role in making renewable energy more accessible and affordable for all.
Before joining RMI full-time, Avery interned as a 2019 Schneider Fellow with RMI’s Islands Energy Program, where she identified critical facilities in Puerto Rico that provide essential services during and after a disaster. She modeled and sized the total solar PV and lithium-ion battery storage microgrid systems needed to power critical facilities across Puerto Rico, to increase energy resilience and autonomy.
Background
Prior to joining RMI, Avery was a lecturer in the Civil & Environmental Engineering department at Stanford University, where she helped teach two energy classes to undergraduate and graduate students. She lectured for Understanding Energy, an energy survey class that covers each energy resource including significance and potential, conversion processes and technologies, drivers and barriers, policy and regulatory environment, and social, economic, and environmental impacts. Her lecture topics included energy efficiency, concentrated solar power, nuclear fusion, ocean energy, hydrogen, energy for buildings, microgrids, and environmental racism and justice.
She also served as the Stanford lead for Extreme Energy Efficiency, an immersive class focused on integrative design and Factor Ten Engineering (10xE), co-led by RMI and taught by Amory Lovins at the Innovation Center in Basalt, Colorado. In addition to her lecturing position, Avery served as the explore energy program manager, a new student engagement program focused on aggregating “everything energy” on Stanford’s campus into one comprehensive website. The aim of this site is to increase awareness of and accessibility to energy-related courses, majors, internships, fellowships, research, faculty, etc. for all students.
During her undergraduate education, Avery pursued a variety of internships in hydrology, air quality, and energy. She performed terrestrial hydrology research with Jay Famiglietti at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she analyzed remote sensing data from the GRACE satellites to model groundwater depletion in the California Central Valley during the 2011–15 drought. Prior to that, she performed various air quality compliance analyses for Ramboll, and created a commercial solar feasibility memo exploring all of the Los Angeles County Sanitation District’s facilities using ArcMap.
Education
MS Civil & Environmental Engineering, Atmosphere/Energy, Stanford University
BS Environmental Engineering, University of Southern California
Certified Engineer-In-Training (EIT) since 2017
Location
San Francisco Bay Area, California
