Paulina Jaramillo
Trustee Professor, Engineering and Public Policy
Courtesy Appointment, Civil and Environmental Engineering, CMU-Africa
Paulina Jaramillo is the Trustee Professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Originally from Medellín, Colombia, she holds a B.S. from Florida International University (2003) and an M.S. (2004) and Ph.D. (2007) from Carnegie Mellon, both in civil and environmental engineering.
Intellectual trajectory and research contributions
Jaramillo’s career can be understood as an evolving effort to connect the technical modeling of energy systems to the policy and equity questions those systems raise, and to do so with increasing geographic, methodological, and institutional ambition.
Her earliest work established her as a leader in process-based life-cycle assessment of fossil energy systems, producing foundational analyses of the climate footprints of coal and natural gas supply chains in the United States. This work was important not only for its findings but for its methodological rigor at a time when LCA of energy systems was often incomplete in its system boundaries.
A significant intellectual pivot came through her involvement with CMU’s RenewElec project beginning in 2010, during which she recognized that the operational constraints of the power system (dispatch orders, transmission limits, storage dynamics) fundamentally shape the environmental outcomes of energy investments. This insight led her to develop methods for consequential LCA that embed power system optimization models within life-cycle frameworks. Using this integrated method, her group has evaluated the marginal emissions consequences of electric vehicles, wind power, energy storage, and large hydropower. This work has meaningfully shifted how researchers think about attributing environmental impacts in interconnected electricity grids.
A second major expansion came in 2014 with her pivot toward energy systems in the Global South, particularly sub-Saharan Africa. Supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, she co-founded the e-GUIDE Initiative, a multi-institutional collaboration that tackled a surprisingly understudied problem: the fact that electricity demand in newly electrifying communities is poorly understood, making conventional planning tools unreliable. Her group applied data science and machine learning to demand prediction in energy-poor economies. This work has practical implications for utility business models and infrastructure investment in contexts where over-building or under-building both carry severe consequences. This line of research deepened through the AfriqAir network, which deployed hybrid air-quality monitoring across African countries. Jaramillo’s AfriqAir collaborations explore the link between unreliable electricity supply, growing transportation-sector emissions, and local air pollution exposure in sub-Saharan Africa.
Throughout, Jaramillo has maintained a parallel commitment to energy systems modeling infrastructure itself. She co-directs the Open Energy Outlook Initiative, which develops the Temoa capacity expansion model as an open-source, fully documented alternative to proprietary tools, such as those underpinning the EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook. The OEO reflects a conviction that the assumptions embedded in energy models (technology costs, policy constraints, discount rates) are themselves policy-relevant choices that should be transparent and contestable.
More recently, Jaramillo has turned her attention to the institutional and regulatory dimensions of the energy transition. Her 2024–2025 AAAS Congressional Fellowship in the office of Congresswoman Teresa Leger Fernández gave her direct experience in legislative drafting on energy issues, and she has since pursued research on NEPA environmental review processes, generation interconnection queue delays, and the adequacy of federal electricity governance frameworks, topics where her engineering modeling expertise meets questions of administrative law and regulatory design. This work represents a natural extension of her career-long pattern: identifying the binding constraints on energy system outcomes and then expanding her toolkit to address them, even when the constraints are institutional rather than technical.
Recognition and broader impact
Jaramillo’s work has been cited over 12,500 times. She was an Andrew Carnegie Fellow (2020), a Coordinating Lead Author for the Transportation Chapter of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report (Working Group III, 2019–2022), a member of the National Academies Roundtable on Macroeconomic and Climate-Related Risks and Opportunities (2023-2024), and an ELATES Fellow (2024). She holds a courtesy appointment at CMU Africa and is a research affiliate of the Kigali Collaborative Research Center. Her research has been funded by NSF, DOE, NOAA, the Sloan Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation, among others.
Through her Substack newsletter Amped Up and regular engagement with journalists and policymakers, Jaramillo has increasingly pursued a model of the “public academic,” one who not only produces research but actively translates it for legislative, regulatory, and public audiences. This commitment to bridging the research-policy gap is arguably as central to her professional identity as any single line of scholarship.
Building Open Access Energy System Models
Sustainable Energy Access in the Developing World
Education
2007 Ph.D., Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
2004 MS, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
2003 BS, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Florida International University
Research Interests
- climate and energy decision making
- climate resilience and environmental impact
- critical minerals and energy security
- electric power systems
- energy
- energy and community involvement
- energy modeling
- energy policy
- energy systems
- engineering and public policy
- EVs and mobility
- green design
- grid and energy infrastructure
- life cycle analysis
- public policy and regulation
- resilient systems
- sustainable engineering
Media mentions
Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation
How digital demands could affect U.S. electricity prices
With support from the Scott Institute’s 2025 hardware and software tool upgrade program, the Open Energy Outlook team updated the mathematical model Temoa’s framework to portray how growing energy demands — particularly from data centers and cryptocurrency mining — could affect electricity costs in the U.S.
Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation
Scott Institute announces 2026 seed grant winners
This year, a total of seven projects received seed funding, with another three proposals receiving support through the hardware and software tool upgrade program.
WomenTech Network
Jaramillo named one of 30 Trailblazing Hispanic Women in tech
EPP’s Paulina Jaramillo was named one of “30 Trailblazing Hispanic Women Shaping the Future of Tech” by WomenTech Network.
AP News
Jaramillo on climate change regulations
EPP’s Paulina Jaramillo was quoted about the NAS’ response to efforts by the Trump administration’s EPA to roll back more than a decade of regulations aimed at fighting climate change.
Carnegie Mellon University Africa
EPP students developed research, met with stakeholders in Rwanda
Three CMU Engineering and Public Policy students spent part of their summer conducting research at CMU-Africa. They collaborated with educators and stakeholders there to integrate their research with the needs and expertise of the local community, and to strengthen ties between students in Pittsburgh and Kigali.
CMU Engineering
Jaramillo completes ELATES, accepted into AAAS fellowship
EPP Professor Paulina Jaramillo is honing her policy outreach skills by participating in prestigious fellowship programs.
Engineering and Public Policy
Jaramillo completes ELATES program, accepted into AAAS fellowship
Engineering and Public Policy Professor Paulina Jaramillo completed the ELATES at Drexel fellowship—a national leadership development program for women in STEM fields in academia.
Heatmap
Jaramillo weighs in on the rules surrounding hydrogen production
EPP’s Paulina Jaramillo spoke with Heatmap about the current rules surrounding hydrogen production in the U.S.
Public Source
Jaramillo comments on the US exporting natural gas
EPP’s Paulina Jaramillo spoke with Public Source about how natural gas is not the solution to the climate crisis. Jaramillo claims that “getting rid of coal and reducing all your other fossil fuel combustion,” is what is necessary to effectively decarbonize.
Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation News
Engineering faculty engage in industrial decarbonization research partnership
MSE’s Chris Pistorius and EPP’s Valerie Karplus and Paulina Jaramillo, alongside Assistant Professor of Economics and Public Policy Edson Severnini, joined collaborators in Germany to begin an international research partnership.
Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation
CMU Researchers and Collaborators Kick Off INDABA Partnership on Decarbonizing Industry
Valerie Karplus and Paulina Jaramillo, Scott Institute Energy Fellows, and Chris Pistorius and Edson Severnini, Scott Institute Faculty Affiliates, joined international collaborators in Heidelberg, Germany, in early May to kick off a research partnership focused on industrial decarbonization.
Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation
Scott Institute Seed Grants Support CMU Energy Projects in Eleventh Annual Round
The Wilton E. Scott Institute for Energy Innovation’s Seed Grants for Energy Research program will support three research projects in the 2023 cycle.