January 15, 2025

An international team of researchers asserts that inadequate recognition of wildlife's benefits to humans can hinder global conservation efforts and policies.

January 13, 2025

Home prices within areas protected by the Endangered Species Act are barely changing, while prices in surrounding communities have increased by as much as 10 percent.

January 10, 2025

A new study co-authored by Environmental Science, Policy, and Management professor Christopher Schell suggests that the human element of city life has a bigger impact than the environment on coyote survival.

January 09, 2025

A proven leader in sustainability and climate solutions, Kibbey brings over two decades of entrepreneurial and strategic expertise to lead the MCS program.

January 08, 2025

The Agricultural and Resource Economics professor spoke to the Haas Energy Institute about his research and career in energy and environmental economics.

January 06, 2025

The ESPM professor will receive the John Dalton medal at the EGU General Assembly this spring.

December 26, 2024

Offered as a one-year program or a concurrent degree with the Haas MBA, Rausser College’s Master of Climate Solutions will empower leaders to enact solutions to the climate crisis.

December 19, 2024

Phil Pister (BA '51 Wildlife Conservation, MA '52 Zoology) was a pioneer of desert fish conservation, and is credited with saving the Owens pupfish (Cyprinodon radiosis) by transferring the entire remaining population to a safe location in 1969. UC Santa Barbara recently published a feature story on his life and legacy. 

December 18, 2024

The ESPM PhD student was first elected to the Albany City Council in 2022 and most recently served as the city’s vice mayor.

December 17, 2024

The most recent issue of California Magazine featured Rausser College and Forestry Field Camp. 

December 16, 2024

UC Berkeley researchers used bacterial DNA from a 120-year-old herbarium specimen to reconstruct the history of Pierce’s disease in California.

December 13, 2024

The Department of Molecular and Cell Biology recently profiles Olzmann, who is a professor of molecular therapeutics who studies the mechanisms that govern organelle and lipid homeostasis in health and disease.

Cristina Crespo Montañés, PhD candidate Energy and Resources Group

By Mathew Burciaga [image caption]

Cristina Crespo Montañés. Photo by Mathew Burciaga

Cristina Crespo Montañés didn’t think she would pursue a PhD, but the intellectual freedom and collaborative spirit of the Energy and Resources Group (ERG) proved irresistible.

“I came to ERG because I wanted to expand the breadth of knowledge that I had,” said Crespo, an industrial engineer from Valencia, Spain, who has worked across the energy sector. Her time with Iberdrola, a major Spanish utility, and AVAESEN, an association of energy and cleantech companies based in her hometown, taught her about renewable energy project development. She later expanded her horizons by working for a small-scale concentrated solar power startup in Copenhagen and as an energy engineer in the Department of Wind and Energy Systems at the Danish Technical University. 

“While my work was challenging and technically interesting, it really didn't resonate with the reason why I worked in the energy space,” she said. “I wanted to better understand how we can understand and change the way we think about energy consumption and production to achieve an equitable energy transition.”

After being selected as a Fulbright Scholarship recipient in 2019, Crespo planned to attend a graduate program that would expand her understanding of the social and policy aspects of decarbonization pathways. She ultimately applied to ERG after reading about the program's interdisciplinary approach and focus on solutions that integrate perspectives from the social sciences, technology, and policy. She recalled being nervous during her first admission interview with Professor Duncan Callaway, now the chair of ERG and Crespo’s PhD advisor, but was put at ease after he accidentally triggered a waving emoji at the beginning of their Skype call. She learned she was admitted on a second call with Callaway.

“I had been reading research papers and trying to anticipate any follow-up questions before the second call, but it turned out that ERG had offered me a spot in the program, and Duncan was trying to convince me to take it,” she recalled. “There was little convincing that needed to be done—ERG really ticked all the boxes.” 

[image caption]

Crespo showcases her research on developing tools to measure energy poverty at the Department of Energy's Justice Week in Washington, DC. Courtesy Photo

Since starting at ERG, Crespo has had the opportunity to explore a wide range of topics in energy policy, climate, and sustainability through courses taught by the program’s core faculty and affiliates in the Goldman School of Public Policy and College of Environmental Design. This interdisciplinary approach—a hallmark of ERG’s curriculum—helped her narrow her research focus to energy demand. 

“I really wanted to understand how people actually use energy, and how transitioning from natural gas to electricity impacts household economics and local energy distribution grids,” she said. Her current research utilizes smart meter data from Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), the major utility in Northern California, to analyze residential energy consumption patterns and project how these patterns would change under various electrification scenarios. Working with Callaway has strengthened her ability to quickly grasp the details of complex techno-economic issues, and has allowed her to hone her problem-solving and data analysis skills. 

She hopes her research will offer insight into the challenges and opportunities of electrification (particularly as the cost of electricity in California remains significantly higher than natural gas) and demonstrate how rate dynamics and other policy interventions could make electrification more or less economically viable.

Her work has also led to a collaboration with Professor Isha Ray and Veronica Jacome (PhD ’19), now a professor at Temple University, on a separate interview-based project exploring how people think about the nexus between home electrification and power unreliability in the East Bay. “We’re trying to understand if households’ experiences with electric unreliability and power loss conditions shape their willingness to electrify or adopt things like solar panels or EVs, or if they’re not even thinking about those,” she said. Their collaborative working style and in-depth discussion have helped Crespo embrace the thoughtful writing process that social sciences require with greater confidence.

[image caption]

Crespo (second from left) chats with fellow ERG students at the annual ERG Fall Welcome Back Party, hosted by Professor Emerit Dick Norgaard and alum Nancy Rader. Courtesy Photo.

And like many ERGies, Crespo has worked as a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory during her graduate studies. She joined Berkeley Lab’s Energy Markets and Policy department during her second semester in ERG and has since contributed to presentations, technical reports, and research on the energy market valuation of hybrid power plants and trends in residential adoption of solar photovoltaics. “This is very timely work as battery storage capacity grows worldwide and the cost of residential solar continues to plummet, driving widespread adoption,” she said. “It is very interesting to understand the value of these assets, for homes, developers, and the grid.” 

Beyond ERG’s strong academics, Crespo said she appreciates the program’s unique culture and the active role that students play. “There are a lot of student-led events, initiatives, and efforts that are encouraged and given space by faculty,” she said. “Students have also participated in reconfiguring the curriculum of the master's seminar series and are a core part of the admissions process.” She has also received strong mentorship from faculty, support from classmates and members of her cohort, and from ERG’s vibrant alumni community. 

“It's been very fruitful to reach out to ERG alumni now that I’m toward the end of my PhD,” she said. “ERG alumni work in so many different places, from academia to tech and think tanks.  Connecting with them has given me a good understanding of what my next steps could look like.

Read More

• 50 Years of the Energy and Resources Group
• Pioneers of interdisciplinary sustainability (Breakthroughs magazine)

Student Stories

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The PMB postdoctoral researcher is one of five women receiving the L'Oréal USA 2024 For Women in Science (FWIS) award for her contribution to STEM fields.

December 10, 2024

ERG professor John Harte and collaborators have developed a hybrid method that that links bottom-up behaviors and top-down causation in a single theory.

December 10, 2024

Undergraduates in the Food, Culture, and the Environment course partnered with local and international organizations over the summer on projects with real-world implications.

December 09, 2024

Assistant professors Francis Annan and Denis Titov have been awarded funding by the Society of Hellman Fellows to support research endeavors.

December 06, 2024

For more than 60 years, UC Berkeley forestry students have traveled to the Sierra Nevada to cut Christmas trees for the community to enjoy.

December 05, 2024

Bhavna Shamasunder, PhD '11 Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, is a leading expert in environmental justice and on cumulative burden.

December 04, 2024

A collaborative tool developed with the help of UC scientists empowers local governments and organizations to take control of their wildfire preparedness.