This article is part of a series featuring Q&As with Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute (ROSEI)-affiliated researchers. Next up is Magdalena Klemun, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering and a core ROSEI faculty member. She joined Hopkins in February from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), where she was an assistant professor in the Academy of Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS).

Magdalena Klemun

How did you first get involved with or learn about sustainability?

I have been interested in sustainability for as long as I can remember. I think one reason is that it is so fundamental to human well-being and survival. Even beyond energy, sustainability is connected to many important areas, like trade, public policy, and workforce development, which matches my broad interests. As a high school and undergraduate student, I liked languages, physics, math, arts, so basically, there were a lot of different possible directions, and sustainability promised an opportunity to work on something important and interesting without narrowing myself down too much.

Why are you passionate about sustainability/renewable energy?

For someone who is studying clean energy innovation, it’s just fascinating to see how much more affordable and reliable these technologies have become and how much they can contribute to the clean energy transition at a relatively low cost and environmental impact. Of course, there’s still a lot of work ahead, but there is also a lot of data and experience to draw from globally to inform future energy decisions.

How does your commitment to sustainability play out in your everyday life?

I try to spread enthusiasm about sustainability and the energy transition, to show how much opportunity there is in this transformation, that it’s not just about new constraints on how to travel and what to buy and eat. And then, whenever I get the chance, I share useful tidbits about climate impact with anyone who will listen. For example, how does the carbon footprint of a long-haul flight compare to eating one or two additional steaks per month? The magnitude of different changes we can make in daily life tends to be useful and interesting to people.

I also have never owned a car – to be fair, partially because I lived in very walkable cities. My first vehicle will be an electric one that I’ll be sure to charge as cleanly as possible. Traveling internationally is difficult to do sustainably, but sustainable transportation in day-to-day life is so much easier to do. I take public transportation and walk whenever I can (to be fair, partially because I like walking).

Tell us about your research and what aspects currently or in the future tie into sustainable energy efforts.

Broadly speaking, I work on techno-economic and environmental assessments of energy technologies and systems. This work involves answering “big” questions about technological change and its inner workings, as well as more applied questions about climate policy and energy system optimization. For example, some recent work with students at HKUST has looked at the cost trajectory of smart electricity meters to understand differences in the evolution of metering hardware and the business processes and data management systems needed to put these meters to work. I also study different ways to account for carbon emissions from cloud computing and what that might entail for countries that have more of these very energy-intensive data centers that we need for cloud computing services globally. And then I’m also interested in low-carbon hydrogen and other technologies that can support industry decarbonization.

Overall, there are two persistent themes in my work that I will continue to pursue at Hopkins, one of which is studying how and why technology characteristics–like efficiencies, materials usage, or installation task durations–change in response to innovation efforts. By innovation efforts, I mean R&D that develops hardware in the lab but also efforts in businesses and local communities to codify practical knowledge used in design and installation processes. Such efforts also produce technologies—“soft technologies” like installation guidelines or software that checks the design compliance of a solar rooftop system against local codes—and these are crucial to speeding up the energy transition because they simplify and automate the sharing of experience across locations. Relatedly, the other persistent theme is how local circumstances impact technologies and energy system performance like cost, flexibility, safety. Local circumstances include workforce training, regulatory cultures, or topology, all of which are important to consider as we roll out clean energy technologies at scale.

Is there an article, book or podcast that people can check out to help better understand the area you work in or your specific work?

Yes there are two articles in Nature that are relevant. One is titled “Mechanisms of hardware and soft technology evolution and the implications for solar energy cost trends,” while the other is titled “Effects of emissions caps on the costs and feasibility of low-carbon hydrogen in the European ammonia industry.”

What advice or suggestions do you have for students who want to pursue careers in sustainable energy?

Sustainable energy has grown into a huge industry, so it can mean many things to be working in this area. I think it is important to be practical and consider the type of work you want to be doing on an everyday basis. Do you want to work with big data sets? Do you want to be in the public or private sector, in a smaller or larger organization? Are you interested in lab work, theoretical, or both?

You need to find out what is interesting to you, and the way to do that is through internships that introduce you to the nuts and bolts of a job. Talk to and be around the people who do this work. It sounds simple, but you won’t know what path is for you unless you ask experts and get hands-on experience.

Why did you choose to join the Hopkins sustainable energy community?

There are a lot of reasons why I wanted to come to Hopkins. On a personal level, I have spent a lot of time on the US East Coast. I like that region and wanted to come back.

I also look at ROSEI as a maturing startup, even though it is part of a major university. What I mean by that is it is a place where a lot of things are already being done well, but there are also opportunities to contribute, which is an exciting prospect for me.

Obviously, JHU is an incredible school with hundreds of world-renowned researchers, so I look forward to learning from colleagues in various areas. The sheer breadth of research initiatives in engineering and social sciences was also exciting to me. My work is very interdisciplinary, and there is no end to the horizon of possibility at a place like Hopkins.