General Information

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Conference Theme and Objectives

The development of energy markets results from an ongoing dynamic interaction between preferences, progress in technologies, and public policy initiatives. From production to conversion to end-use, whether from fossil fuels, renewable power, or other sources, energy markets keep evolving at a rapid pace. Cutting across this to make sense of the ever-changing landscape is the analysis and language of energy economics: the essential ingredient that brings a common understanding of the forces and drivers in play.

The 38^th Annual USAEE/IAEE North American Conference provides a forum for informed and collegial discussion of how energy economics is contributing to the current and future thinking of businesses, consumers, technology developers, and public policy institutions in North America and around the world as they drive towards the future world of energy.

Our 2021 virtual conference takes place everywhere, from your browser, to keep the energy economics dialogue and debate alive, across North America and the world. As in previous years, the conference will highlight forward-looking energy themes at the intersection of economics, technology, and public policy, including those affecting energy infrastructure, environmental regulation, markets, the role of governments, and international energy trade. Participation from industry, government, non-profit, and academic energy economists will enrich a set of robust, diverse, and insightful discussions.

Topics to be addressed include:

The general topics below are indicative of the types of subject matter which may be considered at the conference. In practice, any topic relating to energy economics, markets, energy policy and regulation, energy trade, energy pricing, drivers of energy demand, adoption of new energy technologies etc. will be considered.

• Energy market and Covid-19
• OPEC+ and US oil production
• Emerging energy supply and use technologies
• Challenges in LNG markets
• Renewable energy developments
• Electrification
• Energy trade
• Decarbonization, policy, and investment
• Digital technology development & deployment
• Consumer choice, electric power & fuels
• Energy policy – national vs. local
• Other topics of interest: shifts in market structures and fundamentals

The concurrent sessions and posters at the USAEE/IAEE conference offer opportunities for students, academic staff, as well as energy economists and practitioners in the business, government, and research communities to present current analysis, research or case studies on topics related to energy economics, and energy markets. Presentations are based on academic papers, but this is not a pre-requisite requirement. We stipulate that presentation proposals submitted for inclusion in the concurrent sessions or poster sessions should not have been previously presented at or published by USAEE/IAEE or elsewhere. Presentations are intended to facilitate the sharing of both academic and professional experiences and lessons learned.

For a listing of all sanctioned IAEE conferences meetings, etc. please click here

For an industry-wide listing of energy conferences please click here

Registration

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Speakers

Paul Brockway 

University Academic Fellow in Energy and Economics at the Sustainability Research Institute, University of Leeds

Dr. Paul Brockway is a University Academic Fellow in Energy and Economics at the Sustainability Research Institute at the University of Leeds, UK. He has a 5 year research fellowship on the topic Applying thermodynamic laws to the energy-GDP decoupling problem, where he applies an Exergy Economics approach to study thermodynamic  energy conversion within energy-economy modelling frameworks.

Carey W King

Research Scientist & Assistant Director, Energy Institute, University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Carey W King is a Research Scientist at The University of Texas at Austin and Assistant Director at the Energy Institute.   Carey performs interdisciplinary research related to how energy systems interact within the economy and environment as well as how our policy and social systems can make decisions and tradeoffs among these often competing factors.  Carey’s research goals center on rigorous interpretations of the past to determine the most probable future energy pathways. He is the author of the book The Economic Superorganism: Beyond the Competing Narratives on Energy, Growth, and Policy, that explains how we can incorporate energy and physical principles into macroeconomic models to improve accuracy in forecasting the policy impacts of the rate and scope of an energy transition.

John Weyant

Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Director of the Energy Modeling Forum, Stanford University 

John P. Weyant is Professor of Management Science and Engineering and Director of the Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy and an affiliated faculty member of the Stanford School of Earth, Environment and Energy Sciences, the Woods Institute for the Environment, and the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford. His current research focuses on analysis of multi-sector, multi-region coupled human and earth systems dynamics, global change systems analysis, energy technology assessment, and models for strategic planning.

Weyant was a founder and serves as chairman of the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium (IAMC), a fourteen-year-old collaboration among over 60 member institutions from around the world. He has been an active adviser to the United Nations, the European Commission, U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Department of State, and the Environmental Protection Agency. In California, he has been an adviser to the California Air Resources, the California Energy Commission and the California Public Utilities Commission.

David Daniels

Visiting Professor at Physical Resource Theory, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Former Chief Energy Modeler, Energy Information Administration

Susan Landau

Bridge Professor in Cyber Security and Policy, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

Susan Landau is bridge professor in cyber security and policy, and splits her time between Fletcher and Tufts University's School of Engineering (as a professor of Computer Science). Susan works at the intersection of cybersecurity, national security, law, and policy. She has testified before Congress, written for the Washington Post, Science, and Scientific American, and frequently appears on NPR and BBC. Her previous positions include senior staff privacy analyst at Google, distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems, and faculty member at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and Wesleyan University.

Kelly Sims Gallagher

Academic Dean and Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

Kelly Sims Gallagher is Academic Dean and Professor of Energy and Environmental Policy at The Fletcher School. She directs the Climate Policy Lab and the Center for International Environment and Resource Policy at Fletcher.  She served in the second term of Obama Administration as a Senior Policy Advisor in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and as Senior China Advisor in the Special Envoy for Climate Change office at the U.S. State Department. 

Gallagher is a member of the board of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University, serves on the Board on Energy and Environmental Systems of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, and also serves on the board of Energy Foundation China. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Broadly, she focuses on energy innovation and climate policy.  She specializes in how policy spurs the development and deployment of cleaner and more efficient energy technologies, domestically and internationally.  She is the author of Titans of the Climate (The MIT Press 2018), The Global Diffusion of Clean Energy Technologies: Lessons from China (MIT Press 2014), China Shifts Gears: Automakers, Oil, Pollution, and Development (The MIT Press 2006), and dozens of other articles and book chapters.

Jessika Trancik

Professor, Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Jessika Trancik is a Professor in the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research examines the dynamic costs, performance, and environmental impacts of energy systems to inform climate policy and accelerate beneficial and equitable technology innovation. Her projects focus on all energy services including electricity, transportation, heating, and industrial processes. This work spans solar energy, wind energy, energy storage, low-carbon fuels, electric vehicles, and nuclear fission among other technologies. Prof. Trancik received her B.S. from Cornell University and her Ph.D. from the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She is currently an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and was formerly at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, and at WSP International/UNOPS (now Interpeace) in Geneva.

Erin Baker

Associate Dean, College of Engineering, University of Massachusetts

Erin Baker, the Armstrong Professional Development Professor in the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department and the director of the UMass IGERT Offshore Wind Energy Program, has been appointed the new associate dean in the College of Engineering, a key position that includes more than a dozen significant job responsibilities.

Just a few of those duties involve: initiating and/or coordinating major research proposals, centers, or other collaborative research initiatives; organizing institutional support and leveraging of state, private, and industry sources of funding as required; providing oversight of existing and planned college facilities (e.g., space allocations, renovations, and needs assessment); managing government relations at both Commonwealth and Federal levels; and promoting research interactions with industry and technology transfer.

Anna Broughel

Program Director, Clean Energy Leadership Institute

Dr. Broughel has recently joined Clean Energy Leadership Institute as a Program Director. She also teaches graduate classes in energy economics at the School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University and at the University of Maryland College Park. Prior to that, she was a senior energy economist and statistician at Tetra Tech, where she supported federal and state clients with research and program management. During her tenure at the U.S. Department of Energy as ORISE Fellow, she worked on the issues of energy equity and on the behavioral aspects of adoption of innovations. Her prior research focused on the social acceptance of large-scale energy infrastructure and on scenario analysis. Since 2020, she has served on the Executive Council of the U.S. Association for Energy Economics and has been a nonresident fellow at the Energy Institute at the University of Texas at Austin.

Schedule

PRELIMINARY PROGRAM SCHEDULE (for download)