Emilie Street, a 2018 graduate of the Clinton School of Public Service, has been promoted to Senior Associate at Resource Innovations, a woman-led energy consulting firm dedicated to creating equal access to clean energy resources.
Street’s work through the remainder of the calendar year will be focused on researching how utilities can improve their offerings for income-eligible customers living in all-electric homes.
Street’s research hopes to provide recommendations on different ways that these customers can maximize energy savings while also improving the cost-effectiveness for the utilities. Her work will include interviewing utility providers with specific offerings for all-electric homes and those with offerings for income-eligible homes in an effort to see what information can be pulled regarding emerging technologies and strategies for addressing this specific group of customers.
“Beyond the interviews, we will be investigating other best practices, emerging technologies, and looking at generalized income data as it compares to usage for this customer group to determine their energy burden – the percentage of gross household income spent on energy costs,” Street said.
Starting in 2022, Street’s work will transition to a new Resource Innovations program, the Healthy Homes Initiative.
“This program will be providing income-eligible customers with energy efficiency improvements and an expanded list of health and safety measures that will focus on improving indoor air quality,” Street said. “This will not only help lower the cost of energy, it will also improve the health conditions of the home.”
“What makes Healthy Homes different from other income-eligible weatherization programs is that we are hoping to partner with healthcare organizations and experts in the community – community health departments, respiratory health experts – to braid health care and utility energy-efficiency funding to provide additional health and safety measures for homes focused on improving indoor air quality and customer health,” Street explained.
Street said that her new responsibilities with Resource Innovations will provide unique opportunities to put her Clinton School experiences and instruction into practice.
“I have already helped craft the interview guide and actually pulled out an old text book from my field research methods class to do so,” Street said of her current research work. “I was also brought on to this position in part because of research experience I gained while attending the Clinton School! Specifically, I will be using qualitative data analysis skills that I strengthened during my Capstone project.”
Street’s Capstone was conducted with Dr. Rebecca Glazier of UA Little Rock on qualitative data analysis from the Little Rock Congregations Study, which conducts research on how congregational community engagement impacts the community, places of worship, and their members. Street’s work included creating qualitative codebooks, coding, and analyzing over sixty interviews with leaders of various faith communities.
Street’s field service efforts at the Clinton School also included international work with Give and Surf, an organization that offers education programs to directly serve a population of over 1,000 indigenous and Panamanian students living on four islands in the Bocas del Toro Island archipelago. She assisted with the opening of Give and Surf’s community center, and created a manual of standard operating procedures and a sustainability plan for the center.
In addition to her Master of Public Service, Street graduated with a degree in public policy leadership and religious studies from the University of Mississippi. Before enrolling at the Clinton School, she was a member of the Young Adult Service Corps and volunteered as an English teacher at Holy Spirit Episcopal Bilingual School in Honduras.
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