About

The Energy Blog @ ETH Zurich brings together ETH Zurich programs on energy policy, science, technology, and business. The Energy Blog is hosted by the Energy Science Center (ESC) and run by a team of dedicated people from ETH Zurich – a collective editorial group comprising enthusiastic doctoral and post-doctoral researchers. It is, therefore, a bottom-up initiative from the research community to serve society.

The Energy Blog @ ETH Zurich aims to create a space for one of the most intensely debated topics of our generation: energy. If climate change is the most important challenge of our century, changing energy systems is the most promising lever to address it. Multi-disciplinary ETH Zurich energy researchers will regularly post argumentative technical and non-technical content with the mission to share knowledge and spark discussion from a multi-disciplinary perspective.

The Energy Blog @ ETH Zurich features two pillars: research highlights, where researchers relate their insights to day-to-day societal and political realities, and the debate room, where researchers voice their personal opinions on current public debates.

Are you passionate about outreach?

The core editorial team of the Energy Blog @ ETH Zürich is a young and highly motivated crew of energy enthusiasts that love to engage in public outreach about recent science and policy research. If you find the blog posts interesting and want to contribute to the success of this initiative, send us an email and let us know what you think: energyblog@ethz.ch

Editorial team

Co-founders

Yael Borofsky

Yael Borofsky completed her doctoral studies in the Development Economics Group and at the Institute for Science, Technology and Policy. Her research focuses on access to infrastructure in informal urban settlements in South Africa and targeting of electricity subsidies.


 

Florian Egli

Florian Egli completed his PhD and post doctoral studies at Energy Politics Group, where he studied investment decisions into new technologies, particularly renewable energy. He is the vice president of foraus – the Swiss Think Tank on Foreign Policy and regularly speaks on climate, energy and foreign policy issues. He has also developed a passion for design thinking, which he uses in workshops to bridge science and policy.


 

Evan Petkov

Evan Petkov completed his doctoral studies at the Group for Sustainability and Technology. His work focuses on transforming the existing building stock towards meeting global climate and energy targets through the implementation of energy efficiency and renewable energy. 


 

Core editors

Alicia Lerbinger

Alicia Lerbinger is a Doctoral researcher in the Group for Sustainability and Technology. In her research, she focuses on socio-techno-economic modelling to determine decarbonization strategies for district energy systems.


 

Ayca Duran

Ayca Duran is a doctoral researcher working in the Architecture and Building Systems group at ETH Zurich. Her research focuses on integrating PV systems into buildings using a machine learning-based approach and the interaction between BIPV systems and built environments. She aims to analyze various aspects of this interaction, with a particular emphasis on urban climate, outdoor thermal comfort, and BIPV efficiency to facilitate decision-making in performance-driven building design.


 

Febin Kachirayil

Febin Kachirayil is a doctoral researcher at the Chair for Energy Systems Analysis in the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering. His research focuses on the representation of demand-side flexibility in local energy system models and its impact on their design and operation.


 

Leopold Peiseler

Leopold Peiseler is a doctoral researcher at the Energy and Technology Policy Group and the Materials and Device Engineering Group. He is also a member of the Institute of Science Technology and Policy, contributing to the SWISSCHAINS research incubator. His work is focused on how and at what cost carbon emissions of Lithium-ion batteries can be reduced.

Leopold Peiseler

 

Jonas Savelsberg

Jonas Savelsberg is a Senior Researcher at the Energy Science Centre at ETH Zurich. His work focusses on policy instruments for the European and Swiss energy transition. He is an expert on Swiss and European electricity markets and has played a leading role in the development of several electricity market models. His current research projects focus on development paths for the Swiss electricity system, the impact of climate change on the energy sector and the integration of electric vehicles. Jonas Savelsberg holds a doctorate in economics and conducted research at the University of Basel and the University of California at Berkeley before joining ETH


 

Jonathan Necdet Peel

Jonathan Necdet Peel is a doctoral researcher in the Climate Policy group in the Institute of Environmental Decisions in the Department of Environmental Sciences. His research focuses on machine learning for energy systems modelling.


 

Kate Lonergan

Kate Lonergan

Kate Lonergan is a Doctoral Researcher at the Reliability and Risk Engineering group in the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering. Her research concentrates on how model-based energy system planning can incorporate concepts of fairness and the quantitative impact of doing so.


 

Katrin Sievert

Katrin Sievert is a doctoral researcher at the Climate Finance and Policy Group where she focuses her research on the investment and financing needs of direct air capture, transport, and storage, as well as the assessment of appropriate financing sources. She is also a member of the Institute of Science Technology and Policy, contributing to the Carbon Removal Lab, and a working member of the DemoUpCARMAconsortium at ETH Zurich.

Katrin Sievert

 

Jacob Mannhardt

Jacob Mannhardt is a Doctoral Researcher at the Reliability and Risk Engineering group in the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering. His research focuses on the complexities of decision-making in the European energy transition, in particular how shortsighted planning impacts our ability to achieve a successful transition.


 

Former editors

Valentina Stampi-Bombelli

Valentina Stampi-Bombelli is a Doctoral researcher in the Separation Processes Laboratory. In the effort of finding ways to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, her research focuses on direct air capture, which is a technology that can capture CO2 directly from the air.


 

Churchill Agutu

Churchill Agutu is a Doctoral researcher carrying out research with the Energy Politics Group in collaboration with the Kigali Collaborative Research Centre (KCRC) under ETH Zurich’s ETH for Development (ETH4D) Scholarship. His research focuses on energy policy and finance and its influence on electrification in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Churchill Omondi Agutu

 

Anna Stünzi

Anna Stünzi finished her PhD in 2020 at the Chair of Economics and Resource Economics. Her research focused on the formation of expectations about future energy and climate policies on the macro and micro-level. In particular, she analysed how expectations can create self-reinforcing effects with respect to economic growth and behavioral changes.


 

Alejandro Nuñez-Jimenez

Alejandro Nuñez-Jimenez completed his PhD in August 2020 at the Group for Sustainability and Technology on the topic of energy policy design for harnessing technological change by the ETH Zurich. Presently, he continues his work as a PostDoc SusTec along with as Post-doctoral Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, Belfer’s Center Environment and Natural Resources Program (ENRP) and the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program (STPP).


 

Johannes Tiefenthaler

Johannes Tiefenthaler is a Doctoral researcher in the Separation Processes Laboratory. His research focuses on the development of technologies which mitigate the climate impact of cement and concrete manufacturing. These mineral carbonation technologies enable a circular concrete economy at the same time. He co-teaches a classed titled “Carbon Capture and Storage and the Industry of Carbon based Resources”.


 

Aimilia Pattakou

Aimilia Pattakou is a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Chair of Economics and Resource Economics. Her research interests include carbon taxation and the implications of promoting green energy in the electricity sector. Previously, she completed her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Lucas Bretschger.


 

Christine Gschwendtner

Christine Gschwendtner is a Doctoral researcher in the Group for Sustainability and Technology. Her research investigates the integration of low-carbon technologies into electricity distribution networks, focusing on the interaction between the transport and the electricity system.


 

Linus Walker

Linus Walker is a Doctoral researcher at the Chair of Architecture and Building Systems. He is conducting research on electric building systems, investigating how increased electrification of building energy systems can potentially lead to more sustainable and leaner building system configurations. He is further involved in the planning of the electrical systems of the living lab research facility HiLo at NEST.


 

Nina Boogen

Nina Boogen is a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Center for Energy and the Environment. Her research focuses on the energy efficiency gap in households. She has worked in several projects funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy and the European Commission that analysed the level of energy efficiency and the behaviour of households with respect to energy saving measures. She is also teaching coordinator at the Chair of Energy and Public Economics.


 

Marius Schwarz

Marius Schwarz is a Post-Doctoral researcher at the Energy Science Center, where he manages the Nexus-e project, a collaboration effort between four professorships to develop a modeling infrastructure for energy systems. His research focuses on the role of public policies for transforming energy systems towards meeting climate and energy targets. Previously, he completed his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Volker Hoffmann at the Group for Sustainability and Technology.


 

Energy Science Center

Christian Schaffner and Annina Gantenbein

The Energy Science Center (ESC) is an interdepartmental competence center at ETH Zurich. The aim of the ESC is to facilitate energy research and teaching activities across research fields and departments. Dr. Christian Schaffner is executive director of the ESC and Annina Gantenbein is responsible for PR, communications and events at the ESC.