Alexandra Costo is a second-year undergraduate in the College, majoring in Economics and Climate & Sustainable Growth. She is interested in how finance, technology, and climate policy intersect to accelerate the transition to clean energy.
She has attended multiple environmental policy symposiums and interned with retail energy suppliers and food‑waste nonprofits. Through her writing for the Sustainability Dialogue, Alexandra works to make complex energy and climate trends accessible, highlight opportunities for innovation, and examine the shared role of corporations and public institutions in achieving net‑zero goals.
“CERAWeek challenged my understanding of the challenges facing the grid. Presenting my research on virtual power plants (VPPs), I discussed the potential of capacity from distributed energy resources (DERs). Talks I attended with industry leaders filled gaps in my research. A consistent view was that energy is not scarce; transmission and storage are the constraints. Addressing this requires faster interconnection, automation, and demand flexibility. Data centers, while increasing demand, can support reliability through on-site generation, and AI can reduce barriers to VPP adoption by improving forecasting the capacity generated and transmitted from DERs. I plan to bring these insights back to UChicago to build my research.”