Environmental Fellow, Harvard University Center for the Environment and Harvard Kennedy School
Contact: cbyers@fas.harvard.edu
Conleigh Byers is an Environmental Fellow at the Harvard University Center for the Environment, based in Harvard Kennedy School. She uses tools from operations research, electrical engineering, and economics to design decarbonized energy systems, with a focus on power systems operations and planning.
Byers received a PhD in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich. Her dissertation, "Price Formation in Electricity Market Design," examines how we can derive good economic signals from the non-convex mixed integer programs used to dispatch generators in the power grid. She holds a dual masters from MIT in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science and Technology & Policy and a B.S.E. in Civil & Environmental Engineering from Princeton University.
As an Environmental Fellow, Byers will work with Professors Henry Lee and William Hogan on the growing challenge of achieving resource adequacy under deep decarbonization, i.e., how we ensure that there is enough of the right kinds of resources available on the system to meet load reliably. Achieving net zero carbon emissions while expanding electrification will require a massive investment in new energy infrastructure, and Byer's research focuses on system design choices that determine the pace and pathway of decarbonization.
