Catherine Nabukalu (Master of Environmental Studies ‘17) and her former professor from the Department of Earth and Environmental Science, Dr. Reto Gieré, have a new article in the journal Resources about the use of charcoal as an energy source in Uganda.
Catherine is now a project coordinator at the District of Columbia Sustainable Energy Utility. While enrolled in the MES program, she took Reto’s course on energy sources and their contribution to global carbon emissions, and noticed that charcoal is often overlooked in that conversation. She knew from her personal experience growing up in Uganda that charcoal is an important part of the energy mix in her home country and elsewhere, and that it contributes to deforestation as well as respiratory and other health risks. She worked with Reto to design an independent study on this topic and secured funding to conduct original research in Uganda.
Read highlights from their research findings in The many lives of charcoal via Penn Today.
