“As soon as I heard about the energy minor, I had to do it,” says Lucy Fan ’12. Before MIT, this chemical engineering major served as president of her high school environmental club, which focused on recycling and composting and other “small things people could do to reduce their impact,” says Fan. She arrived at MIT with the intention of becoming an environmental engineer.
But partly because of the Energy Studies minor, Fan says she found herself shifting emphasis from an interest primarily in sustainability and renewable sources of energy to a broader focus on energy. One subject, 15.031J, “Energy Decisions, Markets, and Policies,” proved particularly influential in this transition. Unlike some classes, where she “learned about how promising all these new technologies are,” says Fan, 15.031J detailed the role of economic incentives and regulations, demonstrating that “what is potentially best for the environment is not necessarily what’s most economically feasible.”
At the same time, Fan decided to concentrate in chemical engineering because “it is a good foundation to think analytically about different issues, to find the most efficient solutions.” She particularly enjoyed 10.27, “Energy Engineering Projects Laboratory,” which straddled both her major and minor interests. Fan studied electrospun membranes for efficiently separating oil and water, a kind of technology that could be scaled up for use in big oil spills. But she was also learning that promising technologies must be analyzed in context, and “that there is no single solution, no panacea” to complex energy problems. Says Fan, “The energy minor gave me a new way of understanding energy issues, and I became determined to try to look at them with a different mindset.”
During a summer internship with Exelon Corporation’s Power Team, Fan discovered she not only had the right technical background, but a knack for economic analysis as well. “I didn’t realize an industry so different from what I was studying would captivate me that much.” She says that without the Energy Minor, she might not have considered the business side of energy as a career option.
Fan is now contemplating working for the electricity industry, perhaps on storage technology for integrating large-scale wind or solar projects into the grid, she says. With the multidisciplinary approach provided by her energy studies and chemical engineering training, Fan says, “I can see how I can become part of a larger solution.”