06/22/2026

Spotlight on Carol Dahl

USAEE NEWSLETTER | SUMMER 2026

This is the latest article in a series featuring distinguished USAEE members reflecting on their careers and their involvement in the USAEE community.

Carol A. Dahl is an Adjunct/Emerita Professor in Mineral and Energy Economics (since 2014) and a Senior Fellow at the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines (2015-date). She was a Professor of Mineral Economics (1991-2014) and Director of the CSM/IFP Joint International Degree Program in Petroleum Economics and Management (1995-2010), in the Division of Economics and Business at the Colorado School of Mines. She served as an Adjunct Professor annually at the Chinese University of Petroleum in Beijing from 2014-2020 and has been Honorary Professor at the University of Dundee since 2017. She received her PhD in Economics from the University of Minnesota studying under Nobel Economics Laureate Christopher Sims. She has published widely in peer reviewed energy journals (with an h index of 29), regularly presents her work internationally, has been a visiting scholar at well-known universities worldwide, and has sat on national technical review panels. Her energy economics textbook, International Energy Markets: Understanding Pricing, Policies, and Profit has been well received. The first edition, a PennWell Books best seller, was also published in Chinese and Croatian. It is now in its 2nd edition with a target of 2027 for the 3rd edition. Within energy economics, her research has focused on modeling and policy in energy markets. Early on she focused more on oil and oil products markets, but more recently energy transition has garnered more of her attention.

Carol, a long-time member of USAEE and IAEE, has served as a book review editor for The Energy Journal since 1992. She became a senior fellow of the USAEE in 1998. She received the Adelman-Frankel Award from the United States Association for Energy Economics for contributions to Energy Economics in 2010, the Outstanding Contributions to the Profession Award from the International Association for Energy Economics in 2013, and the OPEC Prize for Research in 2023. You can see more of her accomplishments and research interests at dahl.mines.edu/dahl-cv.pdf.

Here are Carol's reflections on her association with energy markets and what USAEE and IAEE has meant to her.

I became interested in energy markets in 1973, when I was picking a topic for my Ph.D. thesis at the University of Minnesota. With the Arab Oil Embargo and price controls, lines for gasoline were snaking around the pumps and down the block. I decided that energy demand elasticities were key issues and chose to write on the demand for gasoline. As I walked to school and didn't own a car, I could be blissfully impartial about the topic. The topic turned out to be good choice. In 1975, I applied and received a fellowship from Resources for the Future to help fund my thesis and a summer internship at the hastily formed Federal Energy Administration (FEA), now the Energy Information Administration (EIA). I received my Ph.D in Economics in 1977, the same year the IAEE was formed. They held their first annual meeting in Washington D.C. in 1979. However, IAEE was not yet on my radar, as I was still struggling with "publish or perish." No time for such frivolities. I was not yet aware of the importance of not only what you know, but who you know for career advancement. However, by 1985 I had not yet perished and decided a few frivolities could be afforded.

I became a member of IAEE and had two co-authored papers accepted that I presented at the 7th Annual International Conference of the IAEE in Bonn, West Germany. One was on projecting utility SO₂ emissions and another modeling the effects of the Soviet Gas Pipeline on Western European Energy Markets. This was to be the start of a long line of papers presented, as I have attended more than 70% of the North American and  international meetings since then. I usually applied to present to not only network and get feedback and but also to get the presenter's reduced conference rate. That same year, I applied for and was accepted on an energy economics delegation to China sponsored by IAEE and the China Energy Research Society of the China Association for Science and Technology.

Mao had been dead for almost a decade and Deng Xiaopeng was struggling to open up China and bring it out of its Communist torpor. As we travelled about China and made presentations, we experienced the inefficiencies of a country, which was once a great empire, but now had fallen. They were, however, on their way to greatness again, but it would take many decades. Do you think it was our delegation that sparked the change?

We flew on the Chinese airline (CAAC), which was typically late, sometimes by many hours. The acronym was joking referred to as: China Airline Always Cancelled. Although Chinese cuisine is one of their great gifts to the world, government run hotels were not noted for the quality of their food or their service. The best illustration is a breakfast conversation. Charley Hitch sampled one of the hot brown beverages on the table and quipped, "If this is the coffee, pass me the tea, and if this is the tea, pass me the coffee." However, Hans Landsberg was impressed with how cheap haircuts were and thought it too bad he could not stock up and take them back to Washington D.C. to save on barber bills. One of the treasures from the trip, was meeting them and other founding or early members of the IAEE: Jim Plummer, Joy Dunkerley, Jane Carter, and Mariano Gurfinkel. Most are now gone, but surely not forgotten. There were also others, like me, who had not yet reached the prominence we were hoping for that became dear friends.

The value from these first two IAEE events has kept me coming back. IAEE meetings are a forum to meet to share our ideas, make new friends and maintain existing friendships. The networking done at IAEE meetings has led to many of my scholarly visits to prominent Universities. Included are sabbatical visits to Stanford University and MIT, where I gratefully received mentoring from Alan Manne and Morrie Adelman. Both had been icons of the profession from my student days.

The mix of disciplines and professions: academia, government, business, economists, engineers, and others, is another valued aspect of the organization. If two heads, points of view, and perspectives are better than one, think about how much better the hundreds of heads, points of views and perspectives attracted to these conferences must be. This comradery and sharing of ideas has enhanced my professional output and advancement.

International is another value. I have attended IAEE conferences on many continents: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Europe, and Australia. Hopefully, we will round out our bucket list and have an IAEE conference in Africa and Antarctica soon. The many adventures at conferences around the world led one member at a conference in Bali, Indonesia to quip: "IAEE stands for International Association for Exotic Excursions."

The USAEE was formed in the mid-1990s and I had been and continued to attend the majority of the North American meetings. As with the IAEE, I was also actively involved in supporting the conferences, reviewing abstracts, evaluating student papers for awards, and hosted two of the meetings held in the Denver area. The same networking, friendships, and profession access kept me coming back.

In conclusion, my 42-year association with IAEE and USAEE has been long and productive. My banner of conference badges [pictured] is witness to my long record of attendance. (Don't you think I should get a cheaper conference rate for being such a loyal disciple?) I would like to conclude with a thank you to all the friends, both living and dead, I have made through IAEE and USAEE over the years. I look forward to all the new friends I will make in the next 42 years.