Environmental and Energy Economics Seminar:

The Energy Institute collaborates with other departments on the UC Berkeley campus to coordinate the Environmental and Energy Economics Seminar Series. The seminars host both local and visiting academic speakers to present recent work on topics pertaining to the economics of the environment and/or energy markets.

We do not distribute papers from the seminars. Some authors have made their papers publicly available through the link to the title of the seminar.

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Energy Markets Workshops:

The Energy Institute also collaborates with LBNL to coordinate the Energy Markets workshop series once a month, please see upcoming/past speakers below.

Upcoming Workshops:

  • Monday, April 15, 2024: 4:00-5:00pm, 241 Giannini Hall, James Sallee, University of California, Berkeley“The Trouble with Green Subsidies”
    • Abstract: This paper explores the efficiency consequences of pursuing decarbonization through a reliance on green subsidies rather than pollution taxes. The paper develops a stylized model that decomposes the potential inefficiencies of green subsidies into several categories. The paper then uses several examples related to renewable energy, electric vehicles and heat pumps to estimate the plausible magnitude of these efficiency consequences. The paper also discusses how additional policies, like performance standards, that would be redundant under optimal pollution taxes can be important complements to a green subsidy scheme because they address some of the inefficiencies of subsidies.
  • Monday, May 13, 2024: 4:00-5:00pm, 241 Giannini Hall, Pete Larsen, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, “Estimating the Economic Impact of Widespread, Long Duration Power Interruptions”
    • Abstract: Estimates of the economic impact of widespread, long duration (WLD) power interruptions can be used to prioritize and justify significant investments in power system resilience. I will present estimates of this type for WLDs originating within the Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) service territory. Our project involved surveying ComEd customers to understand how they might respond when confronted with a WLD power interruption. Our team then used the survey responses to calibrate a state-of-the-art regional economic model (“POET”) to estimate economic impacts to households and 38 industry sectors across 17 impacted micro-regions (individual counties or aggregations of counties) within ComEd’s service territory and beyond. We ran one-day, three-day, and 14-day interruption duration scenarios each with varying geographic extents as well as estimated the benefits of deploying additional backup generation across the service territory. The results were then compared to a “business as usual” scenario assuming that no interruption occurred.
  • Monday, June 17, 2024: 4:00-5:00pm, 241 Giannini Hall. Additional information forthcoming.