UC Berkeley Press Release
Energy expert Alex Farrell has died
Note: UC Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group has scheduled a Friday, May 2, memorial for Alex Farrell. The event will be held from 1:30 to 4 p.m. in the Lipman Room on the 8th floor of Barrows Hall. Colleagues, students and friends of Farrell are invited to attend.
BERKELEY – Alexander E. Farrell, an associate professor in the Energy and Resources Group at the University of California, Berkeley, who worked closely with state government over the past year to chart a course to reduce California's carbon emissions, died earlier this week at his home in San Francisco. He was 46.
 Alexander Farrell was a leading expert on transportation fuels and the role of transportation in climate change. (Jeffery Kahn/UC Berkeley photo) |
"He was one of the leading lights in the area of low-carbon fuels and energy systems, and his career was on a dramatic rise," said colleague Dan Kammen, a professor in the Energy and Resources Group and of public policy who helped recruit Farrell to UC Berkeley and co-authored many papers with him, including a just-released report on plug-in hybrid vehicles. "The trajectory of his career and his contributions were both impressive. Alex was a great mentor to the graduate students in the group as well as to students from across campus working on energy and sustainability."
As an example of the great demand for Farrell's expertise, Farrell was due to testify at a legislative hearing in Minnesota on April 15 on a possible low-carbon fuel standard for that state, Kammen said.
Most recently, Farrell was the coordinating lead author of a chapter on transportation for a major study for the state on how California can implement climate change policy through the use of state and local policies, and on the role in this effort of technological innovation in transportation. This report from the state's Economic and Technology Advancement and Advisory Committee was submitted to the California Air Resources Board in February.
Last year, Farrell and Daniel Sperling, director of UC Davis' Institute of Transportation Studies, led two collaborative studies for the state providing the first-ever blueprint for fighting global warming by reducing the amount of carbon emitted from transportation fuels.
"That report, commissioned by Governor Schwarzenegger, has had a huge impact," Sperling said. "It is being used as the basis for California's low-carbon fuel standard and by an expanding number of other states and countries, including the European Union."
During the preparation of those studies, Farrell's management role, which included consultation with constituencies ranging from environmental and government organizations to electricity and oil companies, was "indispensable," Sperling said. "He was a fabulous partner, collaborator, intellectual leader and emerging superstar. His death is sad and devastating personally, and professionally, it is a huge loss."
Last year, Farrell was asked to join The Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels, a new international panel of environmental, energy, economic and cultural experts, to develop standards by which nations and consumers can judge biofuels and their impact on the environment and society. According to Jason Mark, program officer for The Energy Foundation in San Francisco, Farrell was to be asked this week to head a new group to develop national low-carbon fuel standards similar to California's.
He also served on advisory committees for the National Academy of Engineering and the National Science Foundation and was a consultant for various public and private organizations.
Born Jan. 1, 1962, in Miami, Fla., Farrell was raised in New Jersey and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1984 with a degree in systems engineering. He served in the Navy as an engineer aboard nuclear submarines from 1984 to 1989, and subsequently worked in private industry before receiving his Ph.D. in energy management and policy from the University of Pennsylvania in 1996.
After serving as a lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania, he was appointed in 1997 as a research fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and then received a year-long post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. In 1998, he joined Carnegie Mellon University as a research engineer in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy, and from 2001 to 2003 served as executive director of the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center. He became an assistant professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon before joining the UC Berkeley faculty in 2003. At UC Berkeley, Farrell also was co-director of the Pacific Region Combined Heat and Power Applications Center.
Farrell published over two dozen peer-reviewed papers on energy and environmental policy topics in journals such as Science, Environmental Science & Technology, Environmental Research Letters and Energy Policy.
"Alex was brilliant, energetic, supportive, insightful and caring, and he had a way of challenging his colleagues and students to think more critically even when they thought they already were," said Tim Lipman, a UC Berkeley colleague and the founding research director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center. "His career had reached a point where his loss is an enormous one, not just for the Energy and Resources Group and the transportation center, but also for the global transportation and energy community."
Farrell is survived by his mother, Alice Farrell, of Harrisburg, Penn.; brothers, Mark of Portland, Ore., and Brian of Portland, Maine; his sister, Beth Ann Connolly of Harrisburg; two nieces and a nephew. His father, Edward R. Farrell, died in 2006.
In lieu of flowers, the family requests that contributions in Farrell's memory be made to the Alex Farrell Memorial Scholarship Fund, Energy and Resources Group, 310 Barrows Hall, #3050, Berkeley, CA 94720-3050. Please make checks out to "Regents of the University of California."