Meghan Pearson, Climate Education, Colorado
Meghan Pearson, who has been in the industry for 7 years, is an Education and Outreach Specialist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL).
What did you do prior to working in clean energy? Why did you transition to the clean energy industry? My mom is an environmentalist so I've always known about solar panels from a chemical standpoint. Understanding what's happening with the electrons is just really fascinating and I like telling stories. So telling the stories of solar, wind, biofuel, biomass, etc. sounded like a fun challenge. It's really fun to tell kids, for example, that we discovered the photovoltaic effect — which is what makes solar panels work — before we were using electricity in our homes.
What's a memorable clean energy project you’ve worked on? We got to build this comic book called The NRELians. I turned a whole bunch of NREL researchers into superheroes who defeat Dr. Fever. It walks kids through five different experiments that slowly get you through wind water, solar, energy storage, buildings, and biomass, and how all of these technologies work together.
What do you wish more people knew about the clean energy industry? I wish more people had a better understanding of hydrogen and the role that hydrogen will play in the clean energy future. We no longer make hydrogen using natural gas, we make it using excess wind, water, solar, and other renewable energy sources. I wish people were less afraid of new technology.
Why should congress invest in clean energy jobs? We should invest in the workforce of the future and the workforce of the future are kids. And we should invest in teaching kids about these renewable energies so that when they grow up, they know that these jobs exist because renewable energy is not going away. Solar is here, wind is here, hydrogen is here. Bio mass, biofuels, water, these are all here. They are where the tech industry is going, where the energy industry is going, so you have to invest in teaching kids what jobs exists. And so it's not even just investing in the jobs, but it's investing in people knowing that the jobs exist so that kids know what paths to follow when they're getting ready to choose their industry.
