Laurie is a Senior Writer/Editor for Rocky Mountain Institute.
Laurie has over 20 years of experience in renewable energy technologies. Prior to joining RMI, Laurie was the International Program Manager for Solar Energy International (SEI), where she organized renewable energy trainings around the world. She also wrote articles for environmental magazines and was green building editor for Home Power magazine.
Laurie has extensive experience working on and documenting rural electrification renewable energy projects throughout Latin America. She spent a year installing solar rural electrification systems in repatriated refugee communities in El Salvador with an organization she cofounded called Solar Community Projects, and spent a year working on solar water distillation at the Engineering University in Managua, Nicaragua. Laurie has also led renewable energy and energy efficiency tours of Cuba with Eco-Cuba Network since 1996. Laurie currently serves as an advisory board member to Remote Energy, a nonprofit organization serving as a technical/teaching arm for organizations that are working on international clean energy programs.
M.Sc., Energy Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder
BA, Mathematics, Colorado College
Awards: Phi Beta Kappa, National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow
Basalt, CO
“The best thing about working at RMI is knowing that I am part of transforming the energy system and creating a better future for not only my son but all the children on the planet.”
2014 was an exciting year for clean energy. There were many remarkable clean energy developments that are helping bring us closer to a clean, prosperous, and secure energy future. Based on an informal poll of the RMI staff we list our top 10.
Christmas is just a few days away, and with it, also TBS’s annual marathon of A Christmas Story. Readers of a certain generation will remember it as the classic movie from 1983 in which Ralphie Parker, the central character, pines for an airsoft Red Ryder BB gun, only to be rebuffed, “You’ll shoot your eye out.”
Do electric vehicles make sense for the rest of us, who choose not to live in an urban setting? Can EVs work in more rural settings, where we’re more dependent on autos and the driving distances are greater?
Various neighborhoods throughout Malmö, Sweden are transforming from brownfield industrial sites into eco-friendly enclaves through the use of renewable energy, energy efficiency, green building, and alternative transportation.
What to do with closed landfills of largely undevelopable land? Many cities and towns are using that unused and often unusable land to generate revenue and/or save on energy costs through solar farms.
Even with lowered PV costs and the prevalence of third-party financing programs, solar is largely out of reach for many low-income families.
The recent economic crisis has hit much of America extremely hard, but the effects can be seen even more drastically on tribal lands. Some tribes are looking to utility-scale renewable energy projects to help bring income into reservations.
Barcelona may be famous for Gaudí’s modernist architecture and its world-class Picasso museum, but there’s something else for which the city of 1.6 million should be known: its commitment to sustainability.
Many Native American reservations sit on large quantities of coal. Others are rich with oil deposits. In fact, much of the development that occurred in the American West would not have been possible without the energy and mineral resources that have been developed on tribal lands. Some have seen those…
The city of Bogotá, Colombia, goes all in on sustainable transportation.