The University of Colorado School of Law's Getches-Wilkinson Center will hold the 2016 Schultz Lecture in Energy on Thursday, Sept. 22, at 5:30 p.m. in the Wolf Law Building, Wittemyer Courtroom. Paul L. Joskow, president, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, will give the lecture, which is free and open to the public. Joskow will speak about "Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from the Electric Power Sector." Registration is required.
Joskow became president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation on Jan. 1, 2008. He is also the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics, Emeritus at MIT. He received a BA from Cornell University in 1968 and a PhD in Economics from Yale University in 1972. Joskow was an active member of the MIT faculty from July 1, 1972 until Aug. 31, 2010, and served as head of the MIT Department of Economics from 1994 to 1998. He was director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research from 1999 through 2007. At MIT he was engaged in teaching and research in the areas of industrial organization, energy and environmental economics, competition policy, and government regulation of industry.
He has published six books and over 125 articles and papers in these areas. His papers have appeared in the American Economic Review, Bell Journal of Economics, Rand Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, International Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Yale Law Journal, New England Journal of Medicine, Foreign Affairs, Energy Journal, Electricity Journal, Oxford Review of Economic Policy and other journals and books.
Electricity generation accounts for about 30 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. While emissions have declined by about 20 percent in the last 10 years, much of this reduction is due to the fortuitous availability of cheap natural gas which has provided incentives to substitute less CO2 intensive natural gas for coal as a generation fuel. The sector faces many challenges to meet long run 2050 goals of reducing emissions by as much as 80 percent from 2005 levels. These challenges include the diversity of federal, state and municipal regulation, the diverse and balkanized structure of the industry from state to state and region to region, the failure to enact policies to place a price on all carbon emissions, the extensive reliance on subsidies and command and control regulation to promote renewables and energy efficiencies, uncertainties about aggressive assumptions about improvements in energy efficiency beyond long-term trends, pre-mature closure of carbon free nuclear generating technologies, integrating renewables efficiently into large regional grids, methane leaks, and transmission constraints. The lecture will discuss these challenges and suggest policies to reduce the costs and smooth the transition to a low carbon electricity sector.
Paul Joskow
