Coreina is a Principal within RMI’s Electricity Innovation Lab. She leads eLab Leap, an ongoing RMI project dedicated to empowering and improving the lives of low-income communities and households in a clean energy future. Her team convenes the eLab Leap Social Change Lab in New York, which brings together stakeholders from over 45 organizations to develop and implement unique solutions for low-income energy needs in the state. Coreina manages eLab Leap’s targeted research and support for emerging DER business models that serve low-income customers.
Coreina is also leading the development of eLab Craft, a global coaching and peer network convened by RMI to share lessons learned from eLab with other social change lab practitioners around the world. eLab Craft supports other organizations who are taking a collaborative and experimental approach to solving their region’s most difficult and complex energy questions.
In 2013, Coreina led eLab’s partnership project with Fort Collins Utilities to answer the question: How far and how fast can Fort Collins go toward a clean, prosperous, and secure energy future? The resulting cost-benefit analysis provided a foundation for Fort Collins’ City Council to issue a resolution in 2014 calling for the creation of a revised Climate Action Plan that would achieve 80% reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.
Coreina subsequently led RMI’s work with the City and its climate action planning team over a period of ten months to develop a revised Climate Action Plan for City Council consideration. The resulting framework for action was presented to Council in February 2015 and helped make the case for the formal adoption of accelerated climate action goals — some of the most aggressive municipal goals in the United States.
Before joining RMI’s eLab Leap team, Coreina was a Manager in the Buildings Practice. She specialized in facilitating design and industry charrettes, with technical areas of concentration in daylighting, water conservation, and life-cycle cost analysis. Coreina planned and facilitated over 20 innovation workshops for building projects, each bringing together between 15-40 multi-disciplined stakeholders to set building performance goals and identify viable design strategies.
Prior to joining RMI, Coreina worked as a securities trader (six years) and as an architectural designer (three years).
Bachelor of Arts in Architecture, Yale University
Boulder, CO/New York City
Platte River Power Authority (PRPA), the generating authority that serves Fort Collins—a community Rocky Mountain Institute has been working with for a long time—and three other Colorado cities recently got the results of a study it commissioned on the relative costs of transitioning to net-zero carbon generation by 2030.
Sometimes leadership arises from impatience. In Fort Collins, Colorado—a city known for its pragmatic, can-do attitude—getting on with the business of reducing greenhouse gas emissions doesn’t have to wait for international treaties, federal mandates, or carbon taxes. This week, the Fort Collins City Council voluntarily adopted revised climate action goals…
It’s the holiday season, which means that millions of Americans are shopping for gifts for loved ones, probably at a mall (if they’re not doing all their shopping online).
Picture the scene: a lone hero is fighting the bad guy. Every punch, nunchuck smack, foot sweep, and spinning back kick has been exhausted. The enemy is finally showing weakness.