Environmental & Energy Economics and Policy

In Fall 2027 I'll be teaching BEPP 2630 (for undergraduate students) and BEPP 7630 (for graduate students).

Course description:

Every sector of the economy needs cheap and abundant energy: manufacturing, information systems, transportation, agriculture, cooking, heating, cooling, and lighting, just to name a few. Climate change mitigation will require a complete overhaul of these systems. The political economy of the energy sector introduces an added layer of costs and inefficiencies. This course analyzes the economics and policy of this environmental and energy transformation. What economic policies can companies expect? With what differences and similarities will low-, middle-, and high-income countries experience these changes? How will households be affected and how will they respond? How does the economy balance the costs of climate change with the costs of decarbonization? This class will empower you to use economic tools to interpret related developments and headlines both domestically and abroad, including for example global oil crises, green taxes and tariffs, power sector regulations, the Inflation Reduction Act, carbon offsets, electric vehicles, critical minerals, the Paris Agreement, power outages, mining, and deforestation. The class will offer tools to evaluate both economic efficiency and equity.