“When it comes to Climate Change, everyone is relevant and everyone has a role to play.” Eun Ji Park (Class of 2013) is playing her part in the global climate change scene through promoting green hydrogen in industry.
The 26 year-old alumnae is currently working for the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) headquarter in Vienna, Austria as the Project Associate for Hydrogen in the Department of Energy. Her work involves building global partnership with the UN Member States through the development of policies, technical guidelines and standards for green hydrogen as well as running the technical cooperation programme to support UNIDO’s partners.
“Innovative technologies like hydrogen play a critical role in decarbonising industry, especially the hard to abate sectors such as cement, chemicals, iron and steel”, Eun Ji explained. “Green hydrogen can also help developing nations and emerging economies like Vietnam achieve energy transition.” As part of UNIDO’s specific mandate, SDG9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), the UN agency is focusing on Inclusive and Sustainable Industrial Development (ISID) including renewable energy, industry water management, clean energy transition, and deployment of renewables in remote areas.
Having lived and worked in six different countries across Asia and Europe, the Environment and Development Master degree holder enjoys sharing her knowledge with her international peers and young people. She is helping students from her university in South Korea and is willing to help mentor UNIS Hanoi students who would like to pursue an international career in development. She advised, “Take your time to find your interest and make sure to feed yourself with news, discussions, technical reports and conferences to stay up to date with what’s happening.”
Eun Ji added, “I love my job. It allows me to contribute to the world by helping countries to reduce their carbon emissions and eventually transition to clean energy.” She revealed that UNIDO has started the green hydrogen dialogue with Vietnam and the country has high potential to become the front runner in energy transition in Southeast Asia.