Domain
Energy Systems
Energy transitions, the power sector, and market & policy modeling — this is the research area my doctoral and post-doctoral work grew out of: treating energy not as a stand-alone engineering problem but as a coupled system, where a move on one dimension ripples into the others. I'm keeping this page short and honest — there is more work in this domain than I've featured here, and I'd rather point you to the real record than pad it.
Evidence
The work here
My work in this domain is mostly on the research side, from time at CU Boulder's Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) and, earlier, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). The clearest public record is the published research rather than a single named client project:
- Power-sector modeling. NSF-funded power-plant emissions research at RASEI (2019–2021) — the analysis behind the Environmental Research Letters paper on hyper-polluting plants (Grant, Zelinka & Mitova, 2021). The full story is in the hyper-polluting power plants case.
- Renewable-energy market transformation. Renewable-energy market-transformation research at NREL in Golden, CO, as a graduate intern (2014–2015).
The full list, with co-authors and venues, is on the publications page. Decarbonization has two sides here: the transition and power-sector side lives on this page; the emissions-accounting side — inventories and plant-level emissions analysis — lives under Climate. Life-cycle assessment and sustainability-assessment work is under Environmental Sustainability, and the SDG-interaction and water-energy-food nexus modeling is under Global Development.
This area has more behind it than the two lines above — dissertation work, conference papers, and collaborations that aren't written up as standalone case studies yet. Rather than invent named projects, I've linked the published record. If a specific piece is relevant to you, ask and I'll point you to it.
Method
The method here
What this domain draws on: systems thinking and system-dynamics modeling to represent coupled energy systems; plant-level data integration for power-sector analysis; market and policy framing from the NREL market-transformation work; and a habit of naming assumptions and showing uncertainty, because energy models are only as good as the boundaries you draw around them.
Where this domain leads
If your energy question sits next to a reporting or compliance need, the compliance lane is the closest fit. If it's research or modeling, tell me the boundaries you care about and I'll be honest about what a systems model can and can't answer.