Title: Energy Intersections with Climate Change Policy, Sustainability and Health

Abstract: This presentation covers two distinct and crucial areas of research within the realm of energy planning, sustainability and public health. The first segment of our research delves into the complex challenges of achieving climate goals through long term energy planning. We propose a novel, decision-relevant multi-model approach, focusing on the development of the Mexican electrical grid. This approach utilizes spatially and temporally detailed expansion plans derived from seven top-down Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), overcoming traditional limitations such as coarse time-steps and a lack of geographic specificity. By comparing these plans, we identify robust areas for investment in generation and transmission infrastructure, thereby offering improved guidance for policymakers in shaping future energy policies to meet long-term climate objectives. Further enhancing our study, we apply various sustainability criteria with the weighted sum method to evaluate the proposed development pathways. This integrated analysis combines pathways from large-scale global models with a detailed electricity model, bringing geographic precision to our multi-criteria sustainability assessment.

The second segment of the presentation shifts focus to ongoing work examining the impact of power outages on hospitalizations for various health conditions in North Carolina. By merging several years’ worth of data on power outages and health outcomes, we aim to provide a comprehensive analysis of how power outages can affect various physical and mental conditions. Our findings aim to identify vulnerable populations during power outages and offer valuable insights for stakeholders in the energy and healthcare sectors to mitigate these impacts.

Together, these studies underscore the critical intersection of energy planning, climate change goals, and health impacts, highlighting the necessity for integrated approaches to address these challenges.

Bio: Dr. Rodrigo Mercado Fernández is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Guadalajara Campus. He obtained his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with the support of the prestigious Fulbright García-Robles scholarship. His career is marked by a commitment to applied multi-disciplinary research in energy, sustainability, modeling, and equity, aimed at informing decision-making and policy. Notably, his work has been applied to energy systems in Mexico and the US, employing multi-model strategies to identify robust investments and analyze the sustainability and equity of energy portfolios, with the aim to aid decision makers in the development of new energy policies. His publications include “The Sustainability of Decarbonizing the Grid: A Multi-Model Decision Analysis Applied to Mexico” (2022) in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Transition, and “Robust Regional Power Planning to Meet Climate Goals” (2022) in Energy and Climate Change. His latest ongoing work explores the nexus between energy and health, particularly focusing on how power outages affect various health outcomes.