Dr Matthais Fripp, Carbon Team

Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

Dr Matthias Fripp is the FPL Energy Research Fellow in Renewable Energy at the Environmental Change Institute. This position is part of a research collaboration between Texas Christian University and Oxford (funded by FPL Energy), to investigate the social, economic and environmental effects of wind power. As part of this position, he recently helped analyze how effectively renewable energy development in Europe has been supported by tradable green certificate systems, renewable energy feed-in tariffs and greenhouse gas emission trading. He is currently working on a study of the net emission reductions that can be attributed to wind farms – considering the lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions associated with building the wind farms themselves, and the short- and long-term emission savings due to changes in the other sources of power used in the electric grid.

Dr Fripp is also studying the potential for radical emission reductions in the UK, if large amounts of renewable energy are developed and complemented with strong demand-side responses – e.g., well-timed charging of plug-in hybrid-electric vehicles. This line of research builds directly on his Ph.D. research at the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, where he assessed the optimal amount of wind and solar power to use in California to minimize the cost of electricity while achieving emission reduction goals and delivering a reliable supply of power.

Dr Fripp holds a Ph.D. and Master’s degree from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Bachelor’s degree in Environmental Studies from Lewis & Clark College. He has previously worked as a modeler and researcher at Trexler and Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in climate change mitigation; and as a membership coordinator and database manager for Best Friends Animal Society, the largest no-kill animal shelter in the U.S.. He also volunteered with the Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement in Sri Lanka in 2005, after the south Asian tsunami.