Matthias Fripp ’99

Matthias Fripp is a research fellow in renewable energy at the Environmental Change Institute and Exeter College, University of Oxford. He specializes in modeling the technical and economic performance of power systems with large shares of renewable energy, using quantitative analysis to go beyond preconceptions of the role that renewable energy can play. His research at Oxford has included comparing the life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions from renewable, nuclear, and carbon-capture power plants. He has also estimated the greenhouse gas emissions that will occur if natural gas plants provide backup power to compensate for forecast errors in power systems with large shares of wind power.

Fripp’s research in the field of renewable energy extends back to his time at Lewis & Clark. His honors thesis in environmental studies projected future decreases in the cost of renewable power and evaluated policy measures that could accelerate this process. He holds a PhD and master’s degree from the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California at Berkeley. For his PhD dissertation, he built a new computer model to find optimal designs for the California power system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the lowest possible cost, while maintaining a reliable supply of power. He has also worked as a modeler and researcher at Trexler and Associates, a consulting firm specializing in climate-change mitigation.