MIT-Denmark Student Stories: Anthony Cheng - Remote Internship at GreenLab

Over the last month and a half, I’ve interned remotely for the Danish green industrial park (“industrial symbiosis”) startup, GreenLab. GreenLab is developing a localized industrial park that utilizes clean energy (wind and solar power) as well as waste streams (e.g. local biomass and plastic waste) to produce useful products such as animal feed, synthetic fuels, and other to-be-unveiled products while promoting growth in more rural and undeveloped areas. The general idea is to be a provider of “facilities as a service”, an opportunity for any industrial partner to be able to plug-and-play into a green system and be guaranteed green energy (fuel and electricity) inputs. 

My work has focused on the international expansion plan for the GreenLab system. The industrial park in the rural area of Skive is in the process of being built, with a target date of full operation of around 2022, but GreenLab already has an eye towards the future, putting out feelers for globalization efforts now. There are a number of partners and regions that I’ve been asked to explore and evaluate from a technoeconomic perspective: taking into account technology limitations, economic limitations, regulatory/political details. I’ve spent most of this remote internship reading reports about various industries, trying to find those limits and understand industries better, especially on the technology side. With such a flexible system in the context of expansion across the entire world, defining what level of detail and specificity needed has definitely been the most challenging aspect.

The work environment, even virtually, has been fantastic, as the company has been incredibly accommodating and worked to make sure I felt included, for example by sending recordings of important calls. It has helped to be working with three other interns, coming from all different backgrounds (engineering/product development, business, marketing), and great team members at GreenLab, even if they have been located half a world away. Danes seem to be quite protective of their downtime as well, which has allowed for free weekends and plenty of time after work each evening. 

That said, there were a few challenging aspects. Scheduling meetings and staying on task has been doubly challenging due to the time difference and remote nature of the internship, so that is something that I would warn future remote MISTI interns about. The company has had some great protocols in place to keep folks accountable, from weekly one-on-one check-ins to a log where all the interns describe their daily tasks, weekly goals, and notes from meetings. I think those sorts of things, or other accessible project management systems like Trello or Asana, are great methods of keeping everyone on track. 

This blog post was written by Anthony Cheng SB ‘20, Mechanical Engineering. Anthony interned remotely for GreenLab, and has, since concluding his remote internship through MISTI, joined the company in person in Denmark.