Meet Eric Lebel, PhD, a senior scientist at PSE Healthy Energy who is pushing forward our understanding of where methane emissions come from and what affects methane may have on our health.
Q: What’s your scientific background?
A: I love numbers. Numbers were always my thing. Chemistry and physics class in high school was the moment where I was like, wow, this is really cool. I really enjoy this. I could do a lot more of this. Being able to visualize abstract things and use numbers to describe what was being talked about is just something that my brain does really well, and it was something that I was excited about.
I did my undergrad at Providence College in biochemistry and had a second major in music. The summer before my senior year, I participated in NASA’s Student Airborne Research Program. (Fun fact, there are only 32 participants of this program every summer, and PSE has not one, not two, but three researchers who are alumni.) During the internship we collected data from NASA’s DC-8 aircraft, which means we were collecting air from outside the plane as the plane was flying. We were trying to collect the most interesting data we could, so we did a lot of low flying over oceans and high flights and missed approaches at airports—all very cool. It was because of that experience that I decided I wanted to focus on earth sciences.
After that I decided grad school would be a good fit. I graduated in 2015 and was admitted to Stanford to work with Prof. Rob Jackson. He was focusing at the time—and still does—on methane emissions.
There are a lot of projects trying to understand where methane emissions are coming from and how much methane is being emitted. I spent most of my PhD looking at oil and gas wells and residential appliances, and coming up with new methods to quantify the methane emissions from those sources. I published papers on my research, and that’s what took me to PSE Healthy Energy.
Q: What do you do here at PSE?
A: The crux of my work is to understand the intersection of the climate and health impacts of methane emissions. These two issues go hand in hand. So mitigating emissions is not just a greenhouse gas issue, and not just a health issue. It’s both at the same time.
I work closely with other scientists and analysts on our team who are collecting, processing, and writing about the data we’ve collected. Once the research is published, I share it with people who need to know about it for their own work—policymakers, other community members, and other scientists.
I also spend a lot of time thinking about how to move our projects forward, brainstorming ideas for new projects, and trying to get funding. It’s really fun to talk about what’s next, how are we going to bring our findings over the finish line and deliver a good scientific article.
Q: What is unique about PSE?
A: We emphasize the scientific aspects of our work, and also take that extra step to disseminate our research to the relevant stakeholders after it’s been published.
We’re pushing our research questions into new territory in ways that are helpful to people writing energy policy. Our tagline really does say it all: “Bringing science to energy policy.” That’s exactly what we do, and I don’t know anybody else who has that at the heart of their mission.
PSE Healthy Energy puts a priority on communicating our scientific research to the public. Here the production crew from CBS Sunday Morning’s sets up lighting and cameras in Eric’s backyard for an interview about his findings on gas composition. Photo courtesy of Eric Lebel.
Q: How do you know when you’re having an impact?
A: When we published the California kitchen study I received several messages from individuals asking us what our research meant for them. A member of congress’ office reached out to us and we had a detailed conversation about what it meant with the staff. And then the Consumer Protection and Safety Commission cited our research when they were trying to make stoves safer.
Q: How do you stay motivated to do this work?
A: You have to see the optimism in it. I’m a practicing Catholic, and Pope Francis really does inspire me—he has his encyclical, Laudato Si. I understand that I’m not doing this work for myself, I’m doing it for other people, and specifically the people who didn’t contribute to this problem in the first place. Working on climate change means that I’m going to leave the world a slightly better place than it would have been if I hadn’t been doing this work.
Q: What was your most exciting day of work at PSE?
A: So when we got the commercial kitchen study grant, we wanted to meet people that this research is directly going to impact, and to learn about the restaurant industry. We wanted to understand, “What do the people in this industry actually want to know?”
We were working with Chef Chris Galarza, who is from Pittsburgh and knows everybody. He said “I know this great cafe that you should go to to try taking these measurements.” So we flew cross country to Pittsburgh and we went to this cafe and that’s where we took measurements and learned so much about how restaurants really work.
The trip was unexpected in unexpected ways. We learned so much just talking to people and experiencing two days in their day-to-day life. We were on our little back perch, with all of our analyzers running and collecting data on their world. They were so welcoming, and interested in the research and they appreciated that we were doing this to try to make their world better.
The restaurant owner was such a great person. She told her life story, and explained why she’s in the restaurant business doing what she does to try to get people back up on their feet—trying to make their world a better place. Letting us do our research in her cafe is one of her ways of doing that. She wants to make sure that people aren’t endangering their health by coming to restaurants, or working in restaurants every day. Inviting us in to help her answer those questions of how she can make her restaurant better for her employees and her patrons was really inspiring.
Q: What’s the most rewarding part of being a scientist?
A: The moment when you realize that you’ve actually been able to discover something that no one else has been able to discover before, and you’ve just increased our sphere of knowledge by, like a tiny, tiny little bit. And that’s all that matters, right?
Sometimes that increase of knowledge is not going to be the most earth-shattering, ground-breaking thing. It might be a null result. But that information is going to be important to somebody somewhere who needs to use it to answer their own research questions. And I really enjoy just being able to discover something new about the world that we haven’t known before.
Sometimes that increase of knowledge is not going to be the most earth-shattering, ground-breaking thing. It might be a null result. But that information is going to be important to somebody somewhere who needs to use it to answer their own research questions.
Q: What would you tell young people who are considering a career in scientific research?
A: It’s best to get involved in projects early and often, even if it’s just a couple of hours a week, working with other scientists who have done a lot of research before. Spend time talking to the people you’re working with, to understand what inspires and motivates them. Sit with yourself, too. What’s motivating you to do this? Do you enjoy doing scientific research? Do you have the patience and flexibility to pivot when something goes wrong? If that kind of stuff doesn’t bring you joy or satisfaction, keep exploring other avenues.
Q: Tell me about your earliest memory of doing science.
A: My science fair experiment in sixth grade. I was trying to grow different types of plants with different colors of light. So I put a bunch of different plants in pots and put colored saran wrap on top of them. Most of the plants did not actually grow. We don’t know if that was because of the saran wrap or because of the bad caretaker of the plant.
A young Eric Lebel stands with his sister in front of his science fair poster. Photo courtesy of Eric Lebel.
I think one plant grew. But I was skeptical that it was because of the saran wrap. Maybe this plant was just better than all the other plants. You know plants, they’re funny things. We can just say there were some rather iffy scientific claims made from this experiment.
The main takeaway for me though was that there is value in all scientific experiments. Whether or not the data say what you think it will. At the end of the day someone could take the data I collected and say something about it. That’s also part of why, even today, it’s important to evaluate in published papers, the materials and methods section. What did they do? Is there something else that they did that would have caused some plants to grow but not others? That’s part of the learning experience. You can have conclusions, but you also have to report what you did. And other people can make determinations on whether that was a valuable experiment, and whether the conclusions are valid.
