”If you know where you want to work, try to get a student job there. Also, try to make your thesis as relevant as possible”

Gavin Arthur Green finished his MSc thesis as part of the study programme in environmental and natural resource economics while working for Dong Energy. He was offered a full-time job two months before he handed in his thesis, as a result of a student job that paid off and a thesis that fitted right in with the employer’s interests.

Before coming to Denmark, Gavin Arthur Green had a bachelor degree in economics and a career in Glasgow, Scotland, where he worked for a financial company. While travelling he met a Danish girl, and because Gavin was disappointed with the lack of ideological motivation that he had experienced in the world of finances, the prospect of moving to Denmark suited him. Gavin wanted a change of career and he wanted to do something meaningful.

 

Finding LIFE

Gavin had always been interested in the environment and thought maybe he could find a specialization that allowed him to work with environmental issues, while at the same time utilizing his background in finances. The MSc programme in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics at LIFE turned out to fit the bill perfectly. He looked at other study programmes, but found the programme at LIFE to be best suited for what he wanted to do. Some of Gavin’s previous professors had strongly recommended LIFE, and prominent LIFE lecturers like Eirik Amundsen helped spur his decision. “It was an economic way of looking at the environment, rather than an environmental way of looking at economics”. Using economic tools to assess the environment and giving the environment a value, Gavin felt at home straight away.

 

Social life and the international student community

After moving to Denmark, Gavin quickly enrolled in a language school, as he was keen on making an effort to become integrated. Today he understands almost everything in Danish. He doesn’t speak the language fluently yet, but his skills are steadily improving.

 

He did not, however, have to worry about language in connection with his studies. “It was never a problem”, he says. “All the classes were in English, which I was highly impressed with. Some of the lecturers were not Danish either and we had a lot of international students in our class”.

 

Gavin did not find the Danes difficult to befriend though. His social network in as well as outside of school mostly consisted of Danes and he is still in touch with most of them. “I think it was easier for me, because I had planned to stay here. Many of the international students didn’t know if they were staying and some of them knew they were only here for a semester or two. Maybe they didn’t want to commit to building a network with the Danes. The international community at LIFE is big and social. They do a lot of things together, but don’t really mingle outside of the group. I hardly spent any time with them because I didn’t feel like an international student in that sense.”

 

Student job

While he was writing his MSc thesis, on cost efficiency and environmental considerations in the energy production in developing countries, a student job with the C02 team at Dong Energy was advertised at LIFE. “I didn’t think I had a chance but nevertheless I dropped them an e-mail saying I didn’t speak Danish but I was writing specifically on the issue they were concerned with. Then they brought me in and said yeah you can have the job. I was planning to finish quite soon after that, so I guess they must have thought it could develop into more than a student job.”

 

Sure enough, Gavin was offered a full-time contract even before he finished his thesis and recognizes, as Dong Energy must have done, that his thesis and the interests of Dong Energy was much like a match made in heaven. For more than two months he was working full time while simultaneously writing on his thesis. When he finished, the thesis was published by UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) and the results also received attention in an industry magazine. Needless to say, Gavin was very pleased by this. He emphasizes the value of finding a topic for your thesis that has a practical application and meets someone’s need: “I made an effort to write my thesis on something that would be useful to an employer. I didn’t make it too theoretical, I made it more practical and I think that really helped.”

 

Working for Dong Energy

Gavin’s day-to-day activities as a buyer of emission quotas for Dong Energy are primarily to promote clean energy development in developing countries, which also links to improving sustainability in these countries. He explains that his job is to find suitable projects that Dong can invest in, with the purpose of reducing carbon emission. Most of the projects are clean energy projects like wind, hydro or methane gas capture. Gavin finds the project and bids for it. If Dong Energy wins the bid, he is also responsible for monitoring the process and making sure that all obligations are fulfilled. Part of his job also involves travelling to Washington D.C to represent Dong Energy at the World Bank as well as visiting projects in developing countries.

 

Competences from LIFE

At LIFE, Gavin acquired a grounded understanding of how the market for carbon trading works – an understanding that he benefits from every day at Dong Energy. He reckons that the specific combination of courses at LIFE, which provided this specialized knowledge, would be difficult to find elsewhere. Also, his classes at LIFE were very interactive, which meant that the students had to act fast to grab an idea and then apply it. This “practical training” has been very useful in his job at Dong Energy.

 

A degree in environmental and natural resource economics qualifies you for quite a broad scope of jobs, Gavin explains. He reckons he could have found work with some part of the government or any number of private enterprises, also within the field of health economics. Worldwide, not many people have an education in environmental and natural resource economics and this makes the candidates more attractive, both in and outside of Denmark.

                                                                                                                 

MSc thesis: With the Kyoto Protocol as backdrop, Gavin assessed one of its economic instruments for cost effectiveness, The Clean Development Mechanism. The Protocol defines three flexible tools under which greenhouse gasses can be reduced, and The Clean Development Mechanism is one of them. Gavin’s MSc thesis targets the same issues as his present position, namely to encourage responsible, sustainable investments in developing countries to reduce carbon dioxide by means of the most cost efficient methods. He wrote his thesis in collaboration with The UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) Risoe Centre on Energy, Climate and Sustainable Development (URC), an initiative that focuses on ensuring that environmental considerations are integrated into energy planning and policy development in developing countries. In his thesis, Gavin found that cost effectiveness under the Kyoto protocol could be significantly improved. The thesis was published by UNEP, and an industry magazine also published the results.

   

 

 

Facts on Dong Energy: DONG Energy is an integrated energy company with leading market positions in Denmark and other key areas of Northern Europe. DONG Energy A/S is a holding company and is incorporated in Denmark.   Over the past few years, DONG Energy has shifted its focus from natural gas sourcing, wholesale, exploration, and gas and oil production to becoming an integrated energy company with activities across the value chain.