Nicholas Institute Symposium Speakers
Jon Anda
Jon A. Anda is President of the Environmental Markets Network (EMN), an organization
set up under the auspices of Environmental Defense to build support in
the financial community for market-based solutions to environmental problems. EMN
will create a policy resource for Washington through a network of financial
CEO’s, traders, exchanges, investors, securities lawyers and academics.
Jon joined Environmental Defense in early 2007 after stepping down from his post as a Vice Chairman of Morgan Stanley. During his 20 year career at Morgan Stanley, Jon served as Head of a number of important business units including Global Capital Markets, Corporate Finance, Equity Capital Markets, Investment Banking Asia, and Institutional Equities Asia. After joining the firm in 1986, he was named Managing Director in 1992 while serving as a generalist investment banker in the Firm’s Chicago office. Jon has worked with a wide range of clients including GE, Google, The Peoples Republic of China, and The Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Jon spent six years in the Capital Markets Group at Continental Illinois National Bank. Jon graduated from the University of Illinois in 1979 and received his Master of Management in Finance from Northwestern University, Kellogg Graduate School of Management in 1980.
He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Asia Society, and previously served on the President’s Advisory Council of Environmental Defense.
Doug Arent
Doug Arent is Director of the Strategic Energy Analysis and Applications Center with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). He specializes in strategic planning and financial analysis competencies; clean energy technologies and energy and water issues; and international and governmental policies. Arent also has expertise in the strategic market management, product planning and risk portfolio management. In addition to his NREL responsibilities, Arent is on the Advisory Board of E+Co (E “and” Co), a public purpose investment company that supports sustainable development across the globe. He is also on the Advisory Board of the Energy and Environmental Security Institute, University of Colorado, is the chair of the Quantitative Work Group in support of the Clean and Diversified Energy Advisory Council of the Western Governor’s Association, and is a Sr. Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Arent supports education efforts through coaching and judging science competitions and is a judge for Net Impact national case study competition, where MBA teams present possible solutions with corporate social responsibility and best business practices guidelines.
Prior to coming to NREL, he was a management consultant to clean energy companies, providing strategy, development and market counsel. Previous positions held include: Director of strategic marketing and business development at Network Photonics; Director of Media Gateway Products and strategic planning manager at Lucent Technologies (now Avaya); and Vice president of business development for Amonix Inc.
Dr. Arent has a Ph.D. from Princeton University, an MBA from Regis University, and a bachelor’s of science from Harvey Mudd College in California.
J. Alan Beamon
Alan Beamon is the Director of the Coal and Electric Power Division in the
Energy Information Administration’s Office of Integrated Analysis
and Forecasting. He has worked on electricity analysis projects since
1984. His responsibilities include the development and maintenance
of the coal, renewable, and electricity components of EIA’s National
Energy Modeling System (NEMS). NEMS is used each year to produce
the Annual Energy Outlook, which provides projections through 2030 of energy
consumption and prices. It is also used to prepare special studies,
including those requested by Congress or the Administration. Key
areas of analysis have included the development of the National SO2 Allowance
Database and analysis of the impacts of the Clean Air Act Amendments of
1990. Recent work has focused on the impact of proposed environmental
regulations on the electricity sector – especially efforts to reduce
nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, mercury, and carbon dioxide. He
received his degree in economics from the College of William and Mary in
1982.
William Bonvillian
William B. Bonvillian, since January 2006, has been Director of the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology’s Washington, D.C. Office. Prior to
that position, he served for seventeen years as Legislative Director and
Chief Counsel to U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman. He has also taught
in the area of science, technology and innovation policy.
Prior to his work on Capitol Hill, he was a partner at a large national law firm. Early in his career, he served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary and Director of Congressional Affairs at the U.S. Department of Transportation, working on major transportation deregulation legislation. His recent articles include, “Power Play – The DARPA Model and U.S. Energy Policy” in American Interest, “Meeting the New Challenge to U.S. Economic Competitiveness” and “Organizing Science and Technology for Homeland Security,” both published in Issues in Science and Technology, and “Science at a Crossroads," published in Technology in Society and reprinted in the FASEB Journal. At MIT, he works to support MIT’s strong and historic relations with federal R&D agencies, and its role on national science policy. His legislative efforts at Senator Lieberman’s office included science and technology policies and innovation issues. He worked extensively on legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security, and more recently on Intelligence Reform and national competitiveness legislation.
He received a B.A. from Columbia University with honors, an M.A.R. from Yale Divinity School in religion; and a J.D. from Columbia Law School, where he also served on the Board of Editors of the Columbia Law Review. Following law school, he served as a law clerk to a Federal Judge in New York. He is a member of the Connecticut Bar, the District of Columbia Bar and the U.S. Supreme Court Bar and serves on the Board on Science Education of the National Academies of Sciences. He has lectured and given speeches before numerous audiences on science and technology issues, and has taught previously in this area at Georgetown, MIT and George Washington
Francisco de la Chesnaye, US Environmental Protection Agency
Michael Corradini
Michael L. Corradini is Chair of Engineering Physics and Wisconsin
Distinguished Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He served from 1995 to 2001
as Associate Dean for the College of Engineering. He also holds appointments
in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Institute of Environmental
Studies. Previously, at Sandia National Laboratories he was principal investigator
for the LWR vapor explosion research for the USNRC as well as other severe
accident research. He was chosen as a NSF Presidential Young Investigator
in Nuclear Reactor Safety in 1984. He has been a consultant for fifteen
years to the NRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards in severe accidents,
containment systems, and multiphase flow as well as many DOE National Laboratories,
the AECL and CEC. He was Vice-Chairman of the 1985 NRC Steam Explosion
Review Group and other NRC safety review panels. He has published
widely in areas related to vapor explosion phenomena, jet spray dynamics,
and transport phenomena in multiphase systems. He was elected a 1990
Fellow of the American Nuclear Society. In 1998, he was elected to
the National Academy of Engineering. He was also served as a presidential
appointee in 2002 and 2003 as the chairman of the Nuclear Waste Technical
Review Board (a separate government agency). In 2004, he was appointed
as a board member of the INPO National Accreditation Board for Nuclear
Training and the National Council on Radiation Protection. Most recently,
he was appointed to the Scientific advisory board to the French Civilian
Atomic Energy Agency. In 2006, he was appointed to the USNRC Advisory Committee
on Reactor Safeguards.
Jim Dooley
Jim Dooley leads the Joint Global Change Research Institute’s and
the Global Energy Technology Strategy Project’s research related
to carbon dioxide capture and storage and the role of this class of technologies
in addressing climate change. He is also a senior member of the Joint Global
Change Research Institute’s Integrated Assessment modeling team and
in this capacity has principally been focused on the set of economic incentives
needed for the development and large scale commercial adoption of advanced
carbon management technologies. Dooley was both a Lead Author for Costs
and Economic Potential and the Cross-Cutting Chairman for Market Deployment
for the recently released Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s
Special Report on Carbon Dioxide Capture and Storage. He is also
on the Editorial Board for the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas
Control, the first peer reviewed journal to focus on carbon dioxide capture
and storage technologies. Dooley is the co-developer of a state-of-the-art
geographic information based model for examining the large-scale deployment
of carbon management technologies in the United States. He also shares
responsibility for developing Battelle’s private sector businesses
relating to Carbon Management.
Howard Gruenspecht, Deputy Administrator, Energy Information Administration
Henry D. Jacoby
Henry Jacoby is currently Professor of Management in the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and Co-Director of the M.I.T. Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. An undergraduate mechanical engineer at the University of Texas at Austin, he holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. Formerly Director of the Harvard Environmental Systems Program, Director of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, Associate Director of the MIT Energy Laboratory, and Chair of the MIT Faculty.
Professor Jacoby has made contributions to the study of policy and management in the areas of energy, natural resources and environment—writing widely on these topics, including five books. Public involvement has included Chairmanship of the Massachusetts Governor's Emergency Energy Technical Advisory Committee (1973-74); and service on the National Petroleum Council (1975-83), the Climatic Impact Committee of the National Academy of Sciences (1973-75), the AAAS Panel on Climate and Water Resources (1986-89), the NAS/NAE Committee on Alternative Energy R&D Strategies (1989-90), a study by the U.S. Office of Technology Assessment of "Systems at Risk from Climate Change” (1992-93), an NRC Panel on Metrics for Global Change Research (2004-05), and the Scientific Committee of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Program (2006- ). In 1998-99 he was Environmental Fellow of the American Council on Capital Formation.
His current research and teaching is focused on economic analysis of climate change and its integration with scientific and policy aspects of the issue.
Josiah Knight
Josiah Knight received his Ph.D. in Mechanical
Engineering from the University of Virginia in 1985. Since then he has been on the faculty of the
Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University. His principal research
areas have been tribology, particularly thermal effects and cavitation
in lubrication; and dynamics of rotating machinery, including stability
and control of vibration. He was a guest professor at Technical University
of Vienna in 1994, 1999 and 2003, teaching and conducting research on active
magnetic levitation for turbomachinery. He served as President of
the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers in 2002-2003 and
chaired the STLE/ASME International Joint Tribology Conference in 2006. In
addition to teaching on the topics of tribology, dynamics, and mechanical
design, Knight periodically offers engineering courses in heat transfer,
fluid mechanics, and energy engineering and the environment. He collaborates
in teaching a course in Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment on energy
technology and environmental effects and is particularly interested in
transportation energy.
John A. "Skip" Laitner
Skip
Laitner is the Senior Economist for Technology Policy for the American
Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE). He previously served
almost 10 years in a similar capacity for the US Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA), but chose to leave the federal service in June 2006 to focus
his research on developing a more robust analytical characterization of
energy efficiency resources within energy and climate policy analyses and
within economic policy models.
In 1998 Skip was awarded EPA's Gold Medal for his work with a team of other EPA economists to evaluate the impact of different strategies that might assist in the implementation of greenhouse gas emissions reduction policies. In 2003 the US Combined Heat and Power Association gave him an award to acknowledge his contributions to the policy development of that industry. In 2004 his paper, “How Far Energy Efficiency?” catalyzed new research into the proper the characterization of efficiency as a long-term resource.
Author of more than 150 reports, journal articles, and book chapters, Skip has more than 35 years of involvement in the environmental and energy policy arenas. He’s been invited to provide technical seminars in diverse places as Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Korea, South Africa, and Spain. He recently served as an adjunct faculty member at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, teaching a graduate course on the Economics of Technology in the Science and Technology Studies program. He has a master’s degree in Resource Economics from Antioch University in Yellow Springs, OH.
Bruce A. McCarl
Bruce McCarl is a Regents Professor of Agricultural Economics at Texas A&M
University and a Distinguished Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics
Association. Dr. McCarl has been on the Texas A&M faculty since 1985
and previously held positions at Oregon State and Purdue. He works on the
economic implications of global climate change, biofuels and greenhouse
gas emission reduction, as well as environmental, forestry and agricultural
policy design. Dr. McCarl is coordinating editor of Choices, and
Associate editor of both Climatic Change and the ejournal Economics. He
was previously Associate Editor of the American Journal of Agricultural
Economics, and Water Resources Research. He is author
of more than 180 journal articles and more than 100 other professional
publications. During recent years he developed the sectoral economic
parts of the U.S. Global Climate Research Program National assessments
for both forestry and agriculture, was a Lead Author on the IPCC Climate
change mitigation report, Agricultural Chapter and has worked on agricultural
and forestry multistrategy assessment of climate change mitigation potential
in conjunction with US policy makers.
David McIntosh, Office of Senator Joseph
Lieberman
David McIntosh is Senator Joseph Lieberman's counsel and legislative
assistant for energy and the environment. In that role, he handles Senator Lieberman's work on legislation to curb global warming. Prior to joining Senator Lieberman's staff in April 2006, David briefly served as a Maryland assistant attorney general representing the state's air agency. For five years before that, he worked at the Natural Resources Defense Council as a Clean Air Act litigator and regulatory lawyer. David graduated from Harvard Law School in 1998 and clerked for a U.S. District Court judge in Washington, DC before joining Covington & Burling
in 2000 as a litigation associate.
Brian McLean, Director, Office of Atmospheric Programs, US Environmental Protection Agency
David Montgomery, Vice President, Charles River Associates
Michal C. Moore
Michal C. Moore is Senior Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Energy,
Environment and Economy at the University of Calgary in Alberta. He
is the former Chief Economist at the National Renewable Laboratory in Golden
Colorado, where he led a research team engaged in examining over-the-horizon
issues for the Department of Energy and developing new methods for cross-cutting
analysis.
He is a former Commissioner with the California Energy Commission, where he held the designated Economist position. In that role he oversaw market structure issues, pricing of electricity and natural gas and data collection for the Commission as presiding member of the Electricity and Natural Gas Committee. He directed the $2B US program to maintain and expand the renewable energy industry in the state and presided over many complex siting cases for new fossil fired generation.
Dr. Moore received his Bachelor of Science in Geology at Humboldt State University and a Master of Science from the Ecology Institute at the University of California at Davis in Land Economics. He obtained a PhD from the University of Cambridge in England in Economics where he is a member of Darwin College.
Dr. Moore is an active researcher in the areas of urban open space and agricultural land conversion, local government fiscal impacts and the structure and rules of energy markets.
Brian Murray
Brian Murray, PhD, joined the Nicholas Institute in March 2006 as Director
for Economic Analysis. Before that, he was Director of the Center
for Regulatory Economics and Policy Research at RTI International. He
specializes in developing and applying economic models to analyze environmental
and natural resource policies, programs, and regulations. He is a widely
recognized expert in the integration of economic and biophysical models
to assess greenhouse gas mitigation strategies in agriculture, land use
change, and forestry. In pollution control, he has examined the economic
effects of traditional command-based regulatory strategies and more market-oriented
approaches such as emissions fees. Dr. Murray's work has been published
extensively in professional journals, edited book volumes, and commissioned
reports. He has been invited as a co-author of several national and international
assessments of forest resources, especially related to climate change.
He received his Ph.D in resource economics from Duke in 1992.
Richard Newell
Richard G. Newell is the Gendell Associate Professor of Energy and Environmental
Economics at the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences,
Duke University. He has served as the Senior Economist for energy and environment
on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers and as a Senior Fellow
at Resources for the Future where he is currently a University Fellow.
He has served on expert committees including National Academy of Sciences
committees on Energy R&D and Innovation Inducement Prizes, the 2007
National Petroleum Council Global Oil and Gas Study, the American Physical
Society study of energy efficiency, and the Advisory Board of the Automotive
X-Prize. He has served as an independent expert reviewer and advisor for
governmental, non-governmental, international, and private institutions
including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department
of Energy, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change, and others. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University,
Master in Public Affairs (M.P.A.) from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson
School of Public and International Affairs, and a B.S. and B.A. from Rutgers
University. Professor Newell’s research centers on the economics
of markets and policies for energy and related technologies, particularly
the cost and effectiveness of alternatives for reducing greenhouse gas
emissions and achieving other environmental and energy goals. Economic
analysis of market-based policies, technology policies, and the influence
of markets and policy on technology innovation and adoption are important
themes in his work.
Billy Pizer
Pizer's research seeks to quantify how the design of environmental policy
affects costs and effectiveness. Specific research has focused on
the aggregate level and distribution of these costs; uncertainty about
cost; technological change; banking, trading and other flexibility mechanisms;
and valuation over long time horizons. He applies much of this work
to the question of how to design and implement policies to reduce the threat
of climate change caused by manmade emissions of greenhouse gases. Currently,
he is working on projects that look at the effectiveness of voluntary programs,
the role of technology programs in pollution control efforts, and the effect
of regulation on competitiveness.
Pizer is a Lead Author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment
Report and serves on both the EPA Environmental Economics Advisory Committee
and the DOE Climate Change Science Program Product Development Advisory Committee. Since
August 2002, Pizer has worked part-time as a Senior Economist at the National
Commission on Energy Policy. During 2001-2002, he served as a Senior Economist
at the President's Council of Economic Advisers where he worked on environment
and climate change issues. He was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University's
Center for Environmental Science and Policy during 2000-2001, and taught at Johns
Hopkins University during 1997-1999.
Steve Plotkin
Steve Plotkin is a staff scientist with Argonne National Laboratory’s
Center for Transportation Research, specializing in analysis of transportation
energy efficiency. He has worked extensively on automobile fuel economy
technology and policy as a consultant to the Department of Energy, and
was a consultant to the National Research Council’s study on the Effectiveness
and Impact of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards. He
is a lead author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
2007 Assessment Report on Mitigating Climate Change. He was for 17
years a Senior Analyst and Senior Associate with the Energy Program of
the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) and prior to that
he was an environmental engineer with the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency.
Mr. Plotkin has a BS degree in Civil Engineering from Columbia University, and a Master of Engineering (Aerospace) degree from Cornell University. He is the 2005 recipient of the Society of Automotive Engineers’ Barry D. McNutt Award for Excellence in Automotive Policy Analysis.
Tim Profeta
Tim is the founding director of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental
Policy Solutions. Prior to his arrival at Duke, he served as counsel
for the environment to Sen. Joseph Lieberman. As Lieberman’s counsel,
Profeta was a principal architect of the Lieberman-McCain Climate Stewardship
Act of 2003. He also represented Lieberman in legislative negotiations
pertaining to environmental and energy issues, as well as coordinating
the senator’s energy and environmental portfolio during his runs
for national office. Profeta has served as a visiting lecturer at Duke
Law School, where he taught a weekly seminar on the evolution of environmental
law and the Endangered Species Act. Before joining Lieberman’s
staff, he was a law clerk for Judge Paul L. Friedman, U.S. District Court
for the District of Columbia.
Dr. Richard Richels
Dr. Richard Richels directs Global Climate Change Research at the Electric
Power Research Institute (EPRI) in Palo Alto, California. In previous assignments,
he directed EPRI's energy analysis, environmental risk, and utility planning
research activities.
He has served on a number of national and international advisory panels, including committees of the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Research Council. He has served as an expert witness at the Department of Energy’s hearings on the National Energy Strategy and testified at Congressional hearings on priorities in global climate change research.
In addition, Dr. Richels has served as a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Second and Third Scientific Assessments and served on the Synthesis Team for the US National Assessment of Climate Change Impacts on the United States. He currently serves on the Scientific Steering Committee for the US Carbon Cycle Program and the Advisory Committee for Princeton University Carbon Mitigation Initiative.
Dr. Richels is a co-author of Buying Greenhouse Insurance - the Economic Costs of CO2 Emission Limits (with Alan Manne). He has written a number of papers on operations research, energy and environmental policy, and energy research and development. He has served as Editor of the Energy, Environment and National Resources area of the Operations Research Journal. He has also served on the Board of Editors of The Energy Journal and the Journal of Applied Stochastic Models and Data Analysis.
Martin Ross, RTI International
Dr. Ross specializes in environmental/energy economics and macroeconomic-simulation
modeling. While at RTI, he has developed the ADAGE model, a
dynamic computable general equilibrium (CGE) model designed to estimate international
and U.S. regional impacts of policies on economic variables such as GDP, industrial
output, household consumption, and investment. The model is particularly
useful for examining how climate-change mitigation policies limiting carbon
dioxide (CO2) emissions from energy consumption and non-CO2 greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions will affect all sectors of the economy. Current research
being conducted for the U.S. EPA, the Pew Center on Global Climate Change,
and the Nicholas Institute at Duke University involves using the ADAGE model
to estimate U.S. macroeconomic impacts of several emissions reductions policies. Other
work at RTI has involved developing a detailed technology model of electricity
markets to examine how criteria pollutant and GHG policies affect capacity
planning decisions and generation costs. Dr. Ross joined RTI in 2003
after spending several years at Charles River Associates where he developed
regional models to look at effects of climate-change mitigation policies and
macroeconomic impacts of electric-utility legislation.
Ron Sands
Ron Sands is a Senior Economist with the Joint Global Change Research Institute,
a collaboration between Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and
the University of Maryland. Ron joined PNNL in 1986 and has been
with the Joint Global Change Research Institute since its founding in 2001. His
early work at PNNL focused on energy demand in buildings with an emphasis
on simulating hourly and monthly electricity demand in commercial and residential
buildings in the Pacific Northwest. Since 1992 he has been a lead
developer of the Second Generation Model (SGM), a computable-general-equilibrium
economic model designed to simulate future greenhouse gas emissions in
several world regions as well as the technology and policy options available
for limiting emissions. He presently manages the economic analysis
task within the U.S. Department of Energy program to enhance Carbon Sequestration
in Terrestrial Ecosystems (CSiTE). Ron received a Bachelor of Electrical
Engineering degree and a Ph.D. in economics, both from the University of
Minnesota.
John P. Weyant
John P. Weyant is Professor of Management Science and Engineering, a Senior
Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Director
of the Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) at Stanford University. Established
in 1976, the EMF conducts model comparison studies on major energy/environmental
policy issues by convening international working groups of leading experts
on mathematical modeling and policy development. Prof. Weyant earned
a B.S./M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering and Astronautics, M.S. degrees
in Engineering Management and in Operations Research and Statistics all
from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a Ph.D. in Management Science
with minors in Economics, Operations Research, and Organization Theory
from University of California at Berkeley. He also was also a National
Science Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School
of Government. His current research focuses on analysis of global climate
change policy options, energy technology assessment, and models for strategic
planning.
Weyant has been a convening lead author or lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for chapters on integrated assessment, greenhouse gas mitigation, integrated climate impacts, and sustainable development, and most recently served as a review editor for the climate change mitigation working group of the IPCC’s assessment report number four. He has been active in the U.S. debate on climate change policy through the Department of State, the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency. In California, he is a member of the California Air Resources Board’s Economic and Technology Advancement Advisory Committee (ETAAC) which is charged with making recommendations for implementing AB 32, The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.