Andrew Krieger is an environmental policy analyst who supports clients like the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. His work around policies that regulate the development of offshore wind energy directly aligns with his passion for wrestling with serious environmental challenges like climate change.
How is your work making an impact?
I’m doing work that’s helping the nation move to an energy system that’s more based on renewables. That will lead to a reduction in carbon emissions and other air pollutants, and allow us to rely more on domestic sources of energy rather than on the imported stuff.
How is your work pushing boundaries?
We’re helping the government set up a domestic offshore wind industry, which is a brand new industry for the United States. It didn’t exist here 5 years ago.
There’s only one offshore windfarm operating at utility scale here right now—Block Island in Rhode Island—and it has four turbines. 20 years from now, if everything goes according to plan, there will potentially be thousands of wind turbines up and down the Atlantic coastline.
As an architect of the future, what’s your take on what’s next?
I think I see a future where we move toward a more diverse set of energy development sources that includes more renewables, as well as upgrades to the grid that help us make more efficient use of energy, however we produce it. I see some climate change that’s already baked into the system that we will simply have to mitigate, but I think there’s still an opportunity to reduce emissions and avoid some of the more negative possible impacts.
