Dr. Andrew DeBenedictis rejoined E3 in summer 2018. He works in E3’s Boston office, where he helps clients in New England and elsewhere work towards a cleaner, more efficient energy sector.

A member of E3’s DER team, Andrew has experience developing grid modernization plans, including cost benefit analyses and business cases for investments, to accommodate the challenges of a two-way decarbonized grid. He also uses E3’s extensive modeling capabilities to analyze the potential for and impacts of building electrification, including likely technology uptake given customer economics under a range of policy mechanisms.

Outside of the DER team, he enjoys working with clients to formulate broad decarbonization strategies through many avenues. Examples include Clean Energy Standards (CESs) designed to meet state carbon reduction targets, Performance Incentive Mechanisms (PIMs) to promote cross-sectoral decarbonization, and Integrated Resource Plans (IRPs) that balance clean energy, reliability, and affordability goals to plan utility investments.

Andrew originally worked at E3 for five years before attending graduate school. During that time, he contributed to E3’s landmark study, published in the journal Science, that analyzed the technology path to deep decarbonization by 2050. He also helped the California Public Utilities Commission develop a successor to its net energy metering (NEM) tariffs, helped to design a robust resource adequacy modeling platform, and conducted extensive rate design analysis for large commercial and industrial customers.

A sense of urgency for addressing climate change and an appreciation of the complexity of that task animates Andrew’s work. He finds that the breadth of E3’s projects provides both an exceptional education and a bracing awareness of the challenge at hand. In his free time, Andrew enjoys playing in local soccer leagues, organizing bridge games with friends, and playing drums in a Boston-area band.

Education: PhD, physics, Tufts University; MS, physics, Tufts University; BA, physics and astronomy, Bowdoin College