Faculty Affiliate Spotlight: Aaron Smith
December 18, 2024
In this newsletter, we are pleased to introduce Professor Aaron Smith. Aaron joined the Energy Institute at Haas as a faculty affiliate in 2023 and came to the University of California, Berkeley as a Professor and Gordon Rausser Distinguished Chair in Agricultural and Resource Economics in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics in 2024. Aaron enjoyed 23 years as a professor at the University of California, Davis. Originally from New Zealand, he earned his PhD in Economics from the University of California, San Diego. Aaron shared how he became interested in energy and environmental economics and what research questions he is focusing on:
What led you to become an energy and environmental economist?
I grew up on a farm in New Zealand and knew pretty early that I didn’t want to spend my career working on a farm. But I was interested in how agricultural systems worked and why government policy mattered. I also liked math, so I studied economics in college and got a PhD where I specialized in econometrics. I was most interested in the power of data to help understand the world and predict the future. My farming and academic backgrounds came together and led me to work on economic issues related to agriculture, energy, and the environment, for example, how energy policies that promote biofuels affect agricultural and fuel markets.
What brought you to UC Berkeley and the Energy Institute?
I have long admired UC Berkeley and the Energy Institute. EI researchers are at the forefront of academic research in energy economics and their work heavily influences state and federal policy. The same is true of faculty and students in ARE and all over campus. I am looking forward to learning a lot from all of them and contributing research that helps improve agricultural and energy policy. I was sad to leave UC Davis and my wonderful colleagues and students there, but I’m excited for this new opportunity.
How would you describe your overall research focus?
My research focus is on the intersection between energy, the environment and agriculture. This has led me to work on biofuels, which are a large and increasing source of transportation fuel in California and the United States. I’m also studying how technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics can improve agricultural production by, for example, enabling more accurate application of fertilizer and pesticides. This can generate the double win of reducing costs to farmers and reducing pollution coming from agriculture, including greenhouse gasses.
What is one research project you are most proud of?
The United States enacted a transportation fuel policy that led to 10% of every gallon of gasoline in the United States being made from corn ethanol. This means that about a third of US corn production is now going into ethanol production, using a land area the size of Kentucky. This reduces opportunities for other users of corn and raises corn prices. My research looked at how much these policies affected the price of agricultural commodities and how farmers responded. Farmers developed a lot more corn land, which led to carbon emissions that fully offset any gains from using ethanol in cars in place of gasoline. This research has become part of the discussion about current and future biofuels policies that push renewable diesel into trucks and bio-aviation fuels into planes.
Finally, what’s an ongoing project that you’re excited about?
Zero emission airplanes seem to be something that’s in the distant future. Decarbonizing the cars and trucks on our roads will most likely happen before decarbonizing aviation. There’s been an increasing policy push to use biofuels produced from agricultural crops and other kinds of biomass and waste to make airplane fuel. I’m working to understand what the implications of those kinds of policies could be. Is it merely going to divert fuel from trucks to planes without reducing overall emissions? Might there be land use changes and other things in the supply chain that cause large greenhouse gas emissions that offset the gains? How much biofuel can the available land produce? How do bio-aviation fuels compare to other ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions?