6 Prof. Magdalena Klemun, Assistant Professor of PPOL, has recently published a paper entitled “Mechanisms of Hardware and Soft Technology Evolution and the Implications for Solar Energy Cost Trends” in Nature Energy (Impact Factor: 67.439). Based on a collaboration with experts from MIT and Harvard, including Goksin Kavlak, James McNerney, and Jessika Trancik, the paper presents a new model to analyze the cost evolution of solar energy systems, capturing the contributions of both hardware and software technology features to total cost reductions since the 1980s. The model reveals that soft technology in designing and deploying solar energy systems contributed far less to the total cost declines of solar installations than estimated. Driving solar energy costs down in the future will likely require either new approaches for improving soft technology or new hardware designs that reduce system dependencies on soft technology features. Either way, continued cost reduction of solar energy and other clean energy technologies will likely require a stronger focus on improving technology features that are non-hardware based. Prof. Klemun’s work has caught wide media attention and has been featured by MIT in EurekAlert!, Mirage News, MIT News, TechXplore, and USA News Hub. Prof. Klemun focuses on understanding how technologies’ economic and environmental performance evolves as a function of policy and engineering design choices, with a particular interest in the role of hardware vs. non-hardware (’soft’) innovations. Prof. Klemun did her Ph.D. and postdoctoral research at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), M.S. in Earth Resources Engineering from Columbia University, where she studied as a Fulbright Scholar, and her B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from Vienna University of Technology. Professor Magdalena Klemun Published the Analysis on Solar Energy Cost Trends in Nature Energy Prof. Magdalena Klemun Assistant Professor, PPOL References: Adam Zewe, To Improve Solar and Other Clean Energy Tech, Look Beyond Hardware, MIT News Klemun, Magdalena M., et al. “Mechanisms of hardware and soft technology evolution and the implications for solar energy cost trends.” Nature Energy 8.8 (2023): 827-838. MIT, Beyond Hardware: Key to Advancing Solar, Clean Energy Tech, Mirage News AWARDS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
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