Energy Burden and Affordability

Joe is a principal in RMI’s Electricity practice, where he leads the development and deployment of quantitative tools that help accelerate an affordable energy transition for all. He also leads RMI’s Ratepayer Lab, a technical assistance platform for consumer advocates.

His career spans more than two decades in the energy sector. Prior to joining RMI, he served as the electricity markets manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists and earlier worked as an economist for the Sierra Club’s analyst team and as an associate at Synapse Energy Economics. He specializes in utility regulation and has participated in 100’s of utility proceedings and contributed expert testimony on state, regional, and federal energy policy.

He serves on the board of the Ohio Citizens Utility Board, a consumer advocate organization in Ohio. He has a MPA, Environmental Science and Policy, from Columbia University and a BS in Chemical Engineering from Florida Institute of Technology. He currently lives in Washington DC.

David is a Senior Associate with the Carbon-Free Electricity team, where he works across energy affordability, rural electric cooperatives, and financial and technical energy analyses. His work includes leading front-end development for the Energy Poverty Policy Simulator (EPPS), building data visualizations and mapping analyses for the team's rural electric cooperative work, and conducting electrification modeling for the city of Houston. He has also supported in clean energy transition analyses for external advocate groups, leading complex multi-method modeling and developing trainings and presentations for external audiences.

Prior to joining RMI, David was a STEM Public Policy Fellow for the American Petroleum Institute (API) and the office of Senator Michael Bennet (D-CO), through the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute (CHCI). Before the fellowship, his research spanned electrochemical storage devices at Columbia University and petroleum thermodynamics and flow assurance at Rice University.

He holds a bachelor's in chemical engineering from Columbia University.

Carina Rosenbach is a senior associate on RMI’s Carbon-Free Electricity team, where she works on advancing energy affordability. Through policy research and facilitation, she supports state regulators and advocates in designing and implementing regulatory reforms that alleviate energy poverty while advancing the energy transition, with a focus on bill assistance, arrearage management, disconnection protections, and low-income energy efficiency programs. She also leads RMI’s Regulatory Collaborative, a peer-to-peer network of public utility commission staff working to advance targeted customer affordability programs.

Carina has supported regulatory policy development in partnership with public utilities commissions and consumer advocates across several states, including the Hawaii Public Utilities Commission, the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, and the Connecticut Office of Consumer Counsel. She has co-authored multiple reports and articles on low-income energy policy and performance-based regulation. In addition, she helps manage RMI’s Performance Incentive Mechanisms (PIMs) Database, a public repository of regulatory mechanisms designed to advance emerging policy objectives such as greenhouse gas emissions reductions, equity, and resilience.

Prior to joining RMI, Carina worked in communications consulting and electoral politics. She holds a BA in Science & Technology Studies with a minor in Data Analysis from Wesleyan University.