2026 Student Blog Series: Undergraduate Seminar Fellows
Explore insights on a variety of topics from our Undergraduate Seminar Fellows.
As a part of the Undergraduate Climate and Energy Policy Seminar, each student fellow writes a thoughtful insight piece on an energy or climate issue of their choice. This year’s insights tackled everything from AI and data centers to cultural heritage in Spain.
Designing for Degrowth: Energy Policy and the Architecture of Enough
Phoebe Anagnos
Even the greenest new buildings come with a heavy carbon cost. As construction emissions rise, adaptive reuse emerges as a powerful climate strategy, challenging the assumption that progress depends on continual expansion.
Mexico, Master of Nearshoring? New Reforms Balance Sovereignty, Reliability, and Geopolitics
Aarit Bhatnagar
Mexico’s energy reforms under President Sheinbaum are redefining who controls the grid—just as electricity shortages and nearshoring send demand surging. Can a state-led model deliver reliability and sovereignty without derailing decarbonization?
The Future of Spent Nuclear Fuel in the U.S.
Makenna Damhorst
Amid an executive order to restart commercial reprocessing and recycling of spent nuclear fuel and a federal push for economically viable transmutation, the need for a community-focused pathway to deep geologic storage remains.
New Pennsylvania Law Aims to Protect Ratepayers from Speculative Data Center Demand
Max Davis
Pennsylvania’s new Load Forecast Accountability Act addresses a $9 billion problem: utilities making speculative bets on data center demand that drive up electricity costs for everyone. The law empowers state regulators to validate projections before they inflate regional capacity prices, protecting ratepayers from paying billions for infrastructure serving data centers that may never materialize.
Brainstorming Materials, Simulating Tests, Optimizing Supply Chains and More: How AI is Revolutionizing Carbon Capture
Anya Draves
Researchers today are leveraging artificial intelligence in breakthrough carbon capture research, from generating and testing new materials, to gaining insights into implementation and deployment. These advancements have significant implications for policymakers, who will need to play a key role in accelerating the development of carbon capture to the scale necessary for meeting climate targets
The Risks of Financing Southeast Asia’s Energy Ambitions
Alexander Kuplicki
ASEAN’s $764B power-grid dream is finally in motion, but political risk and investor uncertainty threaten to pull the plug.
The Future of Power: Cross-Border Grid Interconnection
Daylia Lian
As electricity demand rises, interconnected grids are emerging as a model for future sustainable, cost-efficient energy sharing between regions
What Spain Teaches Us About Climate Change and Cultural Heritage
Irene Antón Piolanti
From floods to wildfires, Spain’s World Cultural Heritage Sites are in danger. Discover how climate change threatens cultural memory—and what Spain is doing to defend it before it’s too late.
Why Utilities Are Trading Peaker Plants for Batteries
Surina Ramoutar
Utilities are retiring gas peaker plants in favor of battery storage as federal and state policy reshapes peak power markets. This blog examines how the Inflation Reduction Act’s standalone storage tax credit and state capacity reforms are driving utility investment, and what policy gaps still limit batteries’ role on the grid.
What Philadelphians Need to Overcome Energy Burden Amid Federal Policy Uncertainty
Courtney Savage
As energy costs climb and federal incentives weaken, Philadelphia households remain stuck between short-term relief programs and long-term barriers to renewable access. Solar could dramatically reduce energy burden, yet high upfront costs, renter limitations, and rollback of programs like Solar for All and solar tax credits make adoption unfeasible. Closing these policy gaps is essential to building affordable, equitable clean-energy pathways for the city’s most vulnerable residents.
Unlocking the Trillions: How Investment Law and Green Taxonomies Can Catalyze Climate Finance
Ellery Spikes
Mobilizing private capital for climate action requires clear rules and credible definitions of ‘green.’ From investment protocols to interoperable taxonomies, this article explores how law and finance can turn trillions into real climate impact
Unearthing Power: Will the DRC Break Free of the “Resource Curse?”
Diego Tobon
Explore how the Democratic Republic of the Congo can escape the resource curse and turn its mineral-rich geology into leverage in the global green transition, navigating corruption, conflict, and great‑power competition to build a more equitable, sustainable future.
Mobilizing Private Capital for the Net-Zero Energy Transition: Lessons from Penn’s Endowment Investment
Cady Wang
As anti-ESG backlash intensifies, can sustainable investing still deliver? Penn’s endowment offers a compelling answer.
Cooperation or Coercion? The Costs of U.S. Trade Policy for the Energy Transition
Angela Ye
The United States faces competing pressures to scale clean energy while bolstering supply chain security. With China surging ahead in manufacturing capacity, Washington has responded with sweeping tariffs and coercive trade deals. While reducing dependence on foreign suppliers is a necessary objective, protectionist instincts may prove counterproductive. Finding the right balance between security and diplomacy in trade policy will decide America’s fate in the global clean energy transition.
The Climate Emergency Inside Hospitals
Claire Zhang
Healthcare systems must decarbonize while building the energy resilience necessary to protect patients during climate disasters, a dual imperative supported by new federal “direct pay” incentives.
