Interviewing a close friend for the alumni magazine columns always brings me joy, and I finally had a chance to talk to Olivia Gish about her interest and career in sustainability.
Sustainability has been a part of Olivia’s life for as long as she can remember because her dad has been working in the renewable energy space since before she was born. Growing up with awareness of climate change and the clean-energy transition, Olivia became an anthropology-modified-with-environmental-studies major at Dartmouth and minored in Native American studies. During her four years in Hanover she spent most of her time on environmental studies and became interested in environmental policy and energy policy.
After graduation she joined Ortus Climate Mitigation, a global developer of renewable energy projects across wind, solar, and green-hydrogen technologies in Europe, including the United Kingdom, and North Africa. Working at Ortus has helped her gain insight into renewable energy development as an industry and what the clean-energy transition will look like.
Although Ortus’s work has been valuable and critical to fighting climate change, the company is focused on broader utility-scaled projects; Olivia’s interests lie in community-based energy development. To expand her knowledge and understand what other solutions exist in the space, Olivia will be attending Columbia’s climate school for a master’s in climate and society this fall to further explore her interest and career path.
Olivia believes that the best decision she made at Dartmouth was to take classes in the Native American studies department. The classes helped her discover new worldviews in learning about historical and current environmental degradation and environmental stewardship. In conjunction with environmental studies classes, she researched national parks systems, in particular the management of land in the United States and South Africa. She focused on how the land and natural resources are managed, both historically and in the present day, and how local communities, especially Indigenous people, are involved in the governance of land. These research projects sparked her interest in community-based resource management, addressing issues such as energy security, inequitable access to clean energy, and finding solutions that help communities that are disproportionately impacted by climate change.
Olivia talked about her interest in “agrivoltaics,” which is the use of land for both agriculture and solar energy generation. The solution creates a symbiotic system whereby crops benefit from the presence of solar panels and solar panels benefit from being on agriculture land. Although agrivoltaics is still a nascent business model in the United States, it is a system that could be effective in addressing sustainability issues and reconciling conflicting need for land.
Olivia views the clean-energy transition as both a policy issue and availability issue within communities. For instance, current permitting processes are not efficient and can slow down energy developments. The energy grid in the United States needs to be upgraded, which makes development on a utility scale more difficult. Although microgrids can avoid utility-specific problems, they still face issues with policies and community awareness. Going into her master’s program, she is eager to learn what incentives for community-based solutions exist or could in the future with the implementation of climate-related policies. Additionally, community involvement is critical for any sustainability initiatives. She hopes to understand all the moving pieces in clean energy transition at a micro scale and the ways she can help address them.
One way to increase awareness about climate action and solutions is to simply have conversations about it.
Because the sustainability space is constantly evolving, it’s easy to find people who are working on something relevant. Olivia is excited to have these conversations inside and outside of Columbia, and New York City is excited to have her back.
—Louisa Gao, 279 E 44th St, Apt 3L, New York, NY 10017; louisa.gao0922@gmail.com