Energy Powerhouse: Students Harness Expertise for Clean-tech Pursuits

A groundswell of interest in green energy and clean technology has swept over the Haas School as students seek to blend their business training with doing good for the environment.

University of California "The growing interest in clean technology coincides with the awakening in the country of the need to move away from fossil fuels, and Berkeley and California are at the forefront of that," says Severin Borenstein, the Haas School's E.T. Grether Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy and director of the multi-campus UC Energy Institute. "So it's only natural for a student interested in the business side of green energy to think about Haas."

Nothing illustrates the mushrooming interest in green energy at Haas more than the Berkeley Energy and Resources Collaborative. BERC, an interdisciplinary student-run organization, has grown to about 450 members since its founding in 2005 by Berkeley MBA students. It has expanded to include participants from five other departments and schools at the University of California, Berkeley.

What's fueling BERC's popularity? "Students understand the environmental and political drivers that are pushing society to look for alternatives to fossil fuels," explains BERC Co-chair Merrian Fuller, MBA 08. "There is tremendous opportunity in clean tech right now and for the foreseeable future."

Sustainable Energy Symposium
In addition to hosting roundtable discussions and field trips, BERC organized the first UC Berkeley Energy Symposium in spring 2007. Titled "Challenges, Opportunities, and the Role of UC Berkeley in Creating a Sustainable Energy Future," the symposium was attended by more than 400 participants, including Berkeley's leading researchers in energy technology, economics, and policy as well as top clean-tech investors, industry experts, and entrepreneurs.

BERC also spearheaded the creation of a new MBA class called Energy, Sustainability, and Business Innovation, taught by Andrew Isaacs, executive director of Berkeley's interdisciplinary Management of Technology program, and Christine Rosen, an associate professor at the Haas School. First offered in spring 2007, the course was designed for students interested in developing and commercializing innovative energy technologies.

Center for Energy & Environmental Innovation
BERC also led the way in creating UC Berkeley's Center for Energy & Environmental Innovation (CEEI). The interdisciplinary center's three-pronged mission is to develop the next generation of energy leaders; increase communication between energy disciplines on the Berkeley campus; and engage with the public and private sector to foster viable global energy solutions.

CEEI will support BERC on an ongoing basis and provide fellowships and internship opportunities in the energy sector. CEEI also has helped develop two more energy classes for fall 2007 – Project Development and Finance and the Alternative Energy Speaker Series.

The cornerstone of the Haas School's energy coursework is a class called Energy and Environmental Markets, which was first developed and taught in 1999 by Borenstein and James Bushnell, a Haas lecturer and research director of the UC Energy Institute. Borenstein, director of the UC Energy Institute since 1994, is a nationally recognized energy expert whose research on gasoline markets and California's electricity deregulation has been published in leading economics journals.

The Energy and Environmental Markets course has been most recently taught by Bushnell and Haas School Associate Professor Catherine Wolfram, who along with Isaacs is co-executive director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Innovation. In addition to their teaching, Wolfram and Bushnell recently completed a critique of the electricity component of California's newly enacted landmark law aimed at reducing greenhouse emissions. Borenstein's latest research, meanwhile, has focused on real-time electricity pricing and the economics of solar photovoltaics.

Interdisciplinary Opportunities
Thanks to Berkeley's interdisciplinary approach to education, Haas students also have the opportunity to learn about everything from cutting-edge clean technology to emissions regulations from several other units on campus. For instance, Haas students have been able to hear from a wide range of experts – UC Berkeley climatologists, ethicists, business and legal experts, and representatives from around the word – at a conference titled "Cap-and-Trade as a Tool for Climate Change Policy" at the School of Law and take classes such as End-Use Energy Efficiency: Technology, Economics, and Policy through Berkeley's Graduate Group in Energy and Resources.

And Berkeley solidified its position as an international pioneer in energy research in 2007 with an unprecedented $500 million grant from British Petroleum to create an Energy Biosciences Institute, charged with developing alternative energy sources.

Haas Competition Winners
At the same time, a growing crop of Berkeley MBAs have been tapping their energy and business knowledge to beat out other schools in various competitions. Most recently, Aurora Biofuels, a company led by Matt Caspari and Guido Radaelli, both MBA 06, placed first and took home $25,000 in the global Intel+UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge in October 2006. Before that, their plan to turn bio-oil derived from algae into a mainstream energy source had nabbed them another first place award plus $25,000 and the People's Choice Award in the April 2006 UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition.

And in September 2006, a team of Berkeley MBA students from the class of 2007 took first place in the University of Texas McCombs School of Business National Energy Finance Challenge. The team, sponsored by Borenstein, was challenged to negotiate on behalf of a fictional US company operating as part of a liquefied natural gas consortium on an imaginary West African island.

Sheldon Kimber, a member of the Haas team, said of the Energy Finance Challenge: "This was a fantastic opportunity to apply skills from a broad range of MBA classes to a very realistic business problem."