If we want to build a sustainable future, sometimes we need to step into the industries that need transformation the most, understand them from within, challenge the status quo, and help make them cleaner, more sustainable, and ultimately part of the solution.
Katrina Hruschka
As an EUR alumna, Katrina Hruschka graduated from Rotterdam School of Management in 2018 with a Master's in Global Business and Sustainability.
At ECET, we want to put the people who help shape our community in the spotlight. In this series, we speak with students, alumni, and academics about their experiences, perspectives, and contributions to the energy transition.
As an EUR alumna, Katrina Hruschka graduated from Rotterdam School of Management in 2018 with a Master's in Global Business and Sustainability. She is currently an independent consultant working on large-scale real-estate transformation, with a background spanning energy trading and green hydrogen project development.
What brought you into the orbit of ECET and what was the state of energy transition education at Erasmus before ECET existed?
You cannot really approach the energy transition from any one angle. It is a technological, legal, economic, political and social transition, all at the same time. Even before ECET, there were certainly experts on technology, law, economics, politics and society at Erasmus. But their knowledge was spread across schools, and I do not think they spoke to one another as much as they do now. ECET changed everything. It plugged a gap, but that gap had opened not because there was no interest in energy but because that interest was fragmented.
Designing or teaching about the energy transition across multiple disciplines is genuinely hard. What were the biggest pedagogical challenges you encountered?
Students come to us speaking very different "languages". A law student will immediately ask who is competent and which regulations apply. Economists usually ask about incentives and market design... The most productive teaching starts with concrete problems rather than the theories you would expect to begin from. Hydrogen is a good example. You start with the development of a hydrogen economy, which clearly sounds like something for economists. But, very quickly, you learn that you cannot build that economy without thinking through infrastructure, law, investment, markets, ecology, social norms and technological risks.
Tell us about a moment that made you feel the teaching was really landing
For me, the most rewarding moments are when students stop defending their "own" disciplines and become genuinely curious about other people's viewpoints... I know that my teaching is landing when my students start making connections that I would otherwise have to make for them.
You do not need to be an expert in every discipline, but you need to understand enough to connect the right people, ask the right questions, and move a project forward.
What would you say to a colleague who is skeptical about whether a Centre like ECET is worth the institutional investment?
Everyone must concede that the world does not care about our organisational boundaries. The energy transition is a really stark example. No traditional faculty can tell us how to build hydrogen infrastructure, redesign the electricity markets, pay for decarbonisation, legislate for new technology and plan for a fair transition all at the same time. I do not mean to say that an interdisciplinary Centre like ours should displace the traditional faculty. What I do mean to say is that you need some kind of "connective tissue" between those faculties and between the university and society.
What should ECET prioritise in Phase II, and what would you personally like to contribute to?
We should continue creating opportunities for students from different faculties to work together on real energy-transition problems... Ideally, what I want to see is one of our external partners running into a problem and giving it to us. Then, we use that problem to generate a research question. The research question enters the classroom, where students challenge and change our preconceptions about the solutions. Once we form this layered knowledge, we can feed it back to industry.