Speakers: Ariel Horowitz, PhD, Synapse and Megan Herzog, Staff Attorney, Conservation Law Foundation, MA.
The electric grid is an essential part of the energy infrastructure that will support increased clean energy sources. In order to successfully transition to clean energy, the grid must be able to handle the increased demand.
The Forum addressed:
- What is the electric grid and who runs it?
- Why is the grid important as we transition to clean energy?
- How can the grid be modernized to support the transition?
A Question and Answer session followed.
This event was part of LWVMA’s Climate and Energy Solutions Series. It was free and open to the public.
Click here for an event flyer.
Presented by The League of Women Voters of Lexington and the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts. Co-sponsored by Conservation Law Foundation, MA.
For a list of partnering organizations for the Climate and Energy Solutions Series click here.
Speakers
Ariel Horowitz is an expert in data analysis and energy systems and technologies. At Synapse, she performs technical and policy analyses and performs detailed electric sector modeling. Dr. Horowitz also drafts testimony and reports related to resource planning, grid modernization, and other electric industry issues. She has provided technical assistance and expert commentary to the Puerto Rico Energy Commission on topics including integrated resource planning, revenue requirements, and utility performance issues. Dr. Horowitz has also drafted comments and reports on utility resource plans as well as on policies such as the Clean Power Plan, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, renewable portfolio standards, and others, on behalf of the State of Michigan and a variety of environmental clients.
Before joining Synapse in October 2015, she was involved in modeling the feasibility, cost, and carbon savings associated with significant scale-up of energy storage technologies as a research fellow at the Project Drawdown Coalition. This built on the work she did for her doctoral thesis on the field of energy storage. While pursuing her degree in chemical engineering, Ariel also performed research for the Fletcher School Center for International Environment and Resource Policy, where she analyzed the health and economic impacts of nitrogen pollution.
Dr. Horowitz’s many publications have appeared in Chemical Communications, Angewandte Chemie, Green Chemistry, and the Journal of Materials Chemistry. She holds a PhD in chemical engineering from Tufts University and a BS in engineering from Swarthmore College.
Megan Herzog is a Staff Attorney at Conservation Law Foundation in Massachusetts, where she works in the organization’s Clean Energy & Climate Change and Ocean Conservation programs. She also coordinates CLF’s work to electrify transportation in New England.
Megan joined CLF in 2016 after four years as the Emmett/Frankel Fellow in Environmental Law & Policy at UCLA’s Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment. She worked with the Emmett Institute on advancing climate change policy, promoting urban sustainability, and other environmental law issues. Prior to that, Megan was a Fellow at the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, DC.
She has published on a range of environmental law topics, including coastal climate change adaptation, pollution control, and greenhouse gas regulation. Megan is also a part-time Lecturer in the Tufts University Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning.
Megan holds a J.D. from Stanford Law School, where she served as Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Stanford Journal of Law, Science & Policy. She earned an M.S. in Environment & Resources from Stanford University and a B.A., magna cum laude, from Mount Holyoke College.