Advancing a Just and Low-Carbon Future with Urban Electrification
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Marilyn A. Brown, PhD
Regents' and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology
Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation account for about 28 percent of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. As we work together to address the profound climate crisis, the U.S. DOT Volpe Center’s new speaker series, Innovation for a Sustainable, Equitable Transportation System, is exploring how to transition to a low-/no-carbon transportation system—one that enables disadvantaged communities to gain access to mobility, jobs, and economic opportunity.
Marilyn A. Brown, PhD, Regents' and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, presented her talk "Advancing a Just and Low-Carbon Future with Urban Electrification" as part of the Innovation for a Sustainable, Equitable Transportation System speaker series on Tuesday, July 20, 2021.
About the Speaker
Marilyn A. Brown, PhD, is Regents' and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technology, where she created and co-leads the Climate and Energy Policy Lab and the Master of Sustainable Energy and Environmental Management. Her research focuses on the design and modeling of energy markets and carbon reduction policies and programs, highlighting opportunities on the customer side of the electric meter—including energy end-use efficiency, rooftop-solar systems, vehicle-to-grid interactions, smart thermostats, and home storage devices.
Using data analytics and energy-engineering models, Brown examines technology and market transitions at the local, regional, and global scale. In the 1990s, she conducted the first national evaluation of the DOE Weatherization Assistance Program, and this year Brown published “The persistence of high energy burdens: A bibliometric analysis of vulnerability, poverty, and exclusion in the United States.”
In 2019, Brown began the multi-year Drawdown Georgia project, an initiative to identify a strategy to significantly cut the carbon footprint of the State of Georgia, modeled after the global Project Drawdown project.
Prior to Georgia Tech, Brown worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she held various leadership positions in energy efficiency and renewable energy. From 2010 to 2017, she served two terms as a Presidential appointee to the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest public power provider. From 2014 to 2018, Brown served two terms on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Electricity Advisory Committee, where she chaired the Smart Grid Subcommittee. She has written six books on the clean energy transition, and in 2007, Brown became a Nobel Laureate for her work with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
News and Video
Read the news story and watch video highlights of Brown's talk from this event.