Expertise: climate change, energy resilience, grid modernization, distributed energy resources, and microgrids
Sunjoo Hwang is a Ph.D. Candidate in Environmental Sciences and Engineering at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently an EDF Climate Corps fellow, and her research focuses on the resilience value of distributed energy systems in terms of climate change, air quality, and public health.
Sunjoo has years of experience with energy and environmental matters in corporate, governmental, academic, and non-profit settings. She was an Energy & Utilities Data Analyst at Enel X where she was responsible for analyzing energy consumption and corresponding GHG emissions from General Motors facilities across Asia Pacific, Africa, and Europe. She built up and verified greenhouse gas inventories for the Sustainability Report and Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), and she conducted qualitative and quantitative analyses to develop recommendations for energy and emissions reductions.
Sunjoo also participated in a climate-related infrastructure project for Johannesburg, South Africa as an Economic Law & Policy intern at the International Institute for Sustainable Development. In that capacity, she researched and analyzed green and gray stormwater management infrastructures to provide the city with cost-benefit analysis.
Sunjoo has recently published her research, in conjunction with the California Department of General Services, where she demonstrated the significant value of replacing diesel backup generators with PV-plus-storage microgrids amid climate-induced frequent power outages in California.
Sunjoo holds a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also earned a Master of International Public Affairs along with a graduate certificate in Energy Analysis and Policy at Robert M. La Follette School of Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.