Instructor Spotlight: Eva Kroh

Why is it important to discuss the climate crisis globally?

We live in an increasingly globalized world, with intricate systems of international trade and growing interconnectedness, and our emissions do not stop at national borders. When I was designing this course around the energy transition, it was imperative to acknowledge some of the most critical political, legal, and social institutions that are going to constitute what a successful transition can look like. It is not only a question of what we can build but where, how, by whom, and at what cost.

What are some misconceptions about climate change that you would like to dispel?

I think this entire course stands to dispel the misconception that solving climate change is going to be primarily a technological issue. While there is a whole conversation to be had about areas where we will need technological advances, as well as questions about the scalability of certain technologies, many of the technologies needed to significantly decarbonize our power sector already exist. We should not be waiting for some amazing future technology to come and save us. The harder question we should ask is, how do we deploy what we already have? How do we adapt institutions, infrastructure, and policies largely built around a different energy system to accommodate a more diverse mix of energy resources? That becomes a conversation around transmission, permitting, utility regulation, environmental justice, and land use. I want to emphasize that our energy transition is as much a political and legal challenge as it is a technological one.

What is your favorite form of renewable energy and why?

My favorite energy source is solar energy! I spent much of my childhood growing up in the Middle East and spent a lot of my history classes learning about how the export and sale of oil facilitated growth and prosperity within the region. In that sense, I have always understood the power and interconnected political, fiscal, and governmental forces intertwined with energy. Solar specifically is my favorite because its rapidly declining costs have fundamentally transformed what is economically possible for renewable energy. At the same time, as promising as solar is, it is only one piece of a much bigger puzzle. We still have to think about how we transmit and store that electricity, where we build the infrastructure, how we permit it, and how the communities affected by those decisions are involved. To me, solar captures both what makes me so optimistic about the energy transition and why the transition is much more complicated than simply developing better technology.

Eva Kroh is a junior majoring in International Relations and Environmental Studies. This semester, she is teaching an Explorations course to a group of first-year students.