Lena Hansen is the Managing Director of Rocky Mountain Institute’s China Program, based in Beijing, where she leads a team of 20 to advise and support China’s energy transition in the areas of power market reform, city carbon peaking, near-zero carbon development, and freight electrification. She has 15 years of experience developing, testing, and implementing innovative efficiency and clean energy solutions.
Background
Prior to joining the China program, Lena led RMI’s US electricity program, where she focused on electric utility business models and the integration of renewable and distributed energy resources into the grid. She co-founded RMI’s Electricity Innovation Lab (e–Lab), a unique multi-year collaboration of leading power sector decision-makers to create transformational solutions, and led RMI’s collaboration with the New York Public Service Commission on its industry-leading reform initiative “Reforming the Energy Vision.” Lena co-authored RMI’s 2011 book Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for a New Energy Era, a roadmap for an economic transition to a low-carbon system in the US.
Education
Donella Meadows Leadership Fellows Program
Master of Environmental Management in Economics & Policy, Duke University
Certificate in Energy & Environment, Duke University
BA, Physics, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill
Location
Beijing, China
Authored Works
insight
The “next generation” electric utility must incorporate variable renewable resources, including wind and solar, in much larger quantities than conventionally thought possible. While resource variability presents a challenge, it should be possible to reduce and manage that variability by geographically distributing renewables, combining them with different renewables, and having more…
insight
Advances in digital communications and renewable energy technologies are poised to facilitate a transition to a “next-generation utility” that fully integrates both supply- and demand-side resources in a way that can enable significantly larger penetrations of intermittent renewable energy technologies than conventionally thought possible. However, as the penetration of intermittent…
insight
In this report, Rocky Mountain Institute explores the underlying theory and practical methodologies for the valuation of renewable resources. We present the theoretical basis first to acquaint thereader with the underlying rationale for the approach to valuing these resources. We then present the practical methodologies that can be used to…
