SIPA: School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University

PhD in Sustainable Development Student Profiles

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Lily Parshall

Lily Parshall graduated from the PhD program in Sustainable Development and was a recipient of an NSF IGERT Fellowship in International Development and Globalization. She studied energy systems and policy, with a focus on the urban scale. She is interested in how cities use energy, why some cities are more efficient than others, and what cities can do to reduce fossil fuel consumption and address climate change. While at Columbia she worked on two projects. The first used spatial analysis to estimate urban energy consumption in U.S. cities, with policy implications for energy-efficient urban development and local energy governance. In the second, she developed a spatially explicit model of demand for heat and power in New York City buildings and determined the technical feasibility and relevant scales of distribution for several alternative technology options.

Additionally, she previously studied modeling national electricity grid expansion in Senegal and Kenya. She has conducted research for the International Energy Agency, the World Bank, and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. She holds a B.A. in Earth and Environmental Science from Columbia University.

Currently, Lily is a Financial Analyst in Goldman Sachs’ Equity Research in New York as part of their Clean Energy Team.