Current Responsibilities
Karin Treyer has joined the Technology Assessment group as a Researcher in Life Cycle Assessment of energy systems in autumn 2011. As the energy sector is currently undergoing heavy changes, she drives forward the LCA methodology to include aspects such as prospective analyses, coupling of technologies, or embracing sensitivities, variabilities and uncertainties. Karin wants to increase credibility and reproducibility of LCA studies and strongly believes in the power of open sharing of software codes, data and other information in order to drive sustainability aspects forward (co-founder of “Départ de Sentier”). She also aims to make LCA results better understandable, e.g. by applying the planetary boundaries concept or connecting the results to the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Her research projects include individual technologies, such as Airborne Wind Energy, a novel type of heat pumps, or deep geothermal power next to analysis of larger technology sets e.g. for production of synthetic Jet Fuel or sector coupling via hydrogen as energy carrier. Further, she is the editor of the heat and electricity sector in the ecoinvent database, where she has driven forward the extension, refining and update automatisation of the electricity mixes.
Education and previous activities
Karin first obtained a B.Sc. degree in Environmental Sciences at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), focusing on aquatic systems. For her master studies, she switched to the institute of Environmental Engineering at ETH and chose lectures in water resources management and ecological systems design. One of the reasons to rearrange her studying fields was her strong interest in Life Cycle Assessments and sustainability issues, including the implementation of research results into real world practice. She gained the M.Sc. degree in 2011 with a project thesis on the status quo of construction waste in Switzerland and a master thesis in collaboration with the FREITAG® company. This thesis included a life cycle assessment of two FREITAG® products besides establishing guidelines for a customized sustainability management in the company.