Stanford University

Energy

This image is having trouble loading!FSI researchers examine the role of energy sources from regulatory, economic and societal angles. The Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) investigates how the production and consumption of energy affect human welfare and environmental quality. Professors assess natural gas and coal markets, as well as the smart energy grid and how to create effective climate policy in an imperfect world. This includes how state-owned enterprises – like oil companies – affect energy markets around the world. Regulatory barriers are examined for understanding obstacles to lowering carbon in energy services. Realistic cap and trade policies in California are studied, as is the creation of a giant coal market in China.

PESD Associate Director Mark Thurber will be a panelist at Yale's Program on Social Enterprise Conference on Development Finance and Sustainable Energy

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Mark Thurber will be sitting on the Public Policy: Facilitating (and Hindering) Productive Partnerships panel at the Yale School of Management's Program on Social Enterprise Conference on Development Finance and Sustainable Energy.
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Patrick R. P. Heller

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Patrick R. P. Heller is a Legal Analyst at the Revenue Watch Institute, where he conducts research and provides policy analysis on legal and contractual regimes governing oil and mineral revenue.  He has worked in the developing world for ten years, for organizations including the U.S. State Department, USAID, the Asian Development Bank, and the International Center for Transitional Justice.  At Revenue Watch, Patrick focuses on governance and oversight of oil sectors, the role of National Oil Companies, transparency, and the promotion of government-citizen dialogue.  He has worked and conducted research in more than 15 developing countries, including Angola, Nigeria, Afghanistan, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Peru, and Lebanon.  He has worked extensively with the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development at Stanford University, where he is a contributing author to an upcoming book on the strategy and performance of National Oil Companies.  He holds a law degree from Stanford University and a master's degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

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Adapting to Shifting Government Priorities: An Assessment of the Performance and Strategy of India's ONGC

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The state-owned company Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) is India's largest company devoted to exploration and production (E&P). This paper attempts to unpack the dynamic of the government-ONGC relationship. Focusing specifically on how government ownership and control has influenced ONGC's performance and strategy, this paper makes four main arguments.

First, ONGC exists, just as with national oil companies in many other countries, because of a legacy of suspicion about outsiders.  It performed well when it was tasked with things that were not that difficult and when it had help for the more difficult ventures, such as frontier E&P and development.

Second, ONGC has run into trouble as it matured, and the roots of its troubles are mainly in its interactions with the GoI and secondarily in its management.

Third, a slew of reforms instituted since the mid 1990s have fundamentally changed the landscape of the E&P sector in India and the dynamic of government-ONGC relationship. Targeted at improving corporate governance, enhancing competition in E&P, and eliminating price controls, those reforms have had a mixed impact on ONGC's performance and strategy. They also highlight the difficulties the government has had in encouraging higher efficiencies in ONGC and the oil and gas sector.

Fourth, given the deep interconnects of the oil and gas sector with India's political economy, fixing the oil and gas sector essentially entails fixing the larger political economy within which the sector is embedded.

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Program on Energy and Sustainable Development Working Paper #91
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Varun Rai

Climate Policy Instruments in the Real World

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On Tuesday, September 7, 2010, the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development in collaboration with the Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and Stanford Law School hosted a special conference on Climate Policy Instruments in the Real World.

This conference featured presentations by leading researchers on the political, economic, and regulatory challenges associated with major climate policy instruments.  The goal of this conference was to transfer the state-of-the-art in policy-relevant academic research on key aspects of climate policy design and analysis to the business, regulatory and policymaking communities.  Each presentation was followed by comments from two discussants that develop the practical implications of the research results presented for decision-makers in industry and government.

Topics our experts explored included: setting a price for carbon, engaging the developing world in climate change mitigation, the role of renewable energy sources in climate change mitigation, mechanisms for reducing greenhouse gases from the transportation sector, managing intermittency in the electricity sector, and mechanisms for adapting to climate change.  

We would like to thank everybody for their participation on September 7, 2010.

For more conference information, please visit:

http://www.certain.com/system/profile/web/index.cfm?PKwebID=0x1992925e31&varPage=home

 


Thank you to all our sponsors:

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Bechtel Conference Center

Robert Stavins Speaker Kennedy School of Government
Richard K. Morse Speaker
Severin Borenstein Speaker Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley
Christopher Knittel Speaker Department of Economics, UC Davis

Frank Wolak

Stanford University 
Economics Department 
579 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6072 

Website: https://fawolak.org/

(650) 724-1712 (650) 724-1717
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Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Holbrook Working Professor of Commodity Price Studies in Economics
Senior Fellow, by courtesy, at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
frank_wolak_033.jpg MS, PhD

Frank A. Wolak is a Professor in the Department of Economics at Stanford University. His fields of specialization are Industrial Organization and Econometric Theory. His recent work studies methods for introducing competition into infrastructure industries -- telecommunications, electricity, water delivery and postal delivery services -- and on assessing the impacts of these competition policies on consumer and producer welfare. He is the Chairman of the Market Surveillance Committee of the California Independent System Operator for electricity supply industry in California. He is a visiting scholar at University of California Energy Institute and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).

Professor Wolak received his Ph.D. and M.S. from Harvard University and his B.A. from Rice University.

Director of the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development
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Matt Kahn Speaker Institute of the Environment and Department of Economics, UCLA
Conferences

PESD researcher Varun Rai to speak at UCLA School of Law's India and Climate Change conference

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The UCLA School of Law’s India and Climate Change conference will be held on Friday, April 9, 2010.

PESD researcher Varun Rai will be a panelist on the challenges for domestic progress in India on climate and energy questions along with Ann Carlson (UCLA School of Law), Anjali Jaiswal (NRDC), and Armin Rosencranz (Stanford University).

This event will bring together non-profit groups, policy analysts, and legal and political science scholars working both in the U.S. and in India on climate change issues for an all-day symposium examining how India will affect, and be affected by, climate change.  Panels will focus on promising routes for engaging with India post-Copenhagen; challenges for domestic progress in India on climate and energy; and the intersection of international trade law and climate questions in India-US relations.

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Energy Working Group Talk: Energy Security and Cooperation in Northeast Asia

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Associate Professor Jae-Seung Lee from Korea University, Division of International Studies will be leading the seminar on energy security and cooperation in Northeast Asia (including East Asia).

Professor Lee holds a B.A. in political science from Seoul National University (1991) and an M.A (1993) and PhD (1998) in political science from Yale University. He also earned a certificate from the Institut D'Etudes Politiques de Paris in France in 1995.

Before joining the faculty of Korea University, he had served as a professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security (IFANS), the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. As a scholar in international political economy, he authored a number of books and articles on Korea, East Asia, and Europe. His current research includes energy security and energy diplomacy of Korea, among others. Prof. Lee has directed the Korea Energy Forum (KEF), an interdisciplinary energy research initiative, and conducted a number of energy projects with UNESCAP and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He has taught at Yale University, Seoul National University, and Korea University.

Stanford University

Jae-Seung Lee Associate Professor Speaker Korea University, Division of International Studies
Seminars

Associate Director Mark Thurber traveled to Edinburgh, Scotland to meet with Wood Mackenzie

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Mark Thurber met with Wood Mackenzie, a leading oil and gas research and consultancy company based in Edinburgh, Scotland. During this visit Mark gave a presentation on conclusions drawn from PESD research on national oil companies, engaging in a fruitful dialogue on the subject with Wood Mackenzie experts.
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An article by PESD research fellow Varun Rai and affiliated faculty David Victor featured in the First Quarter 2010 issue of IAEE Energy Forum

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The First Quarter 2010 issue of the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE) Energy Forum has published an article written by PESD research fellow Varun Rai and PESD affiliated faculty David G. Victor. This issue of the forum  looks at the far east, particularly China and India. There are six articles that look at multiple facets of energy economics in that area and the forum will continue with this focus in the second quarter issue.

Rai and Victor's article titled "Identifying Viable Options in Developing Countries for Climate Change Mitigation: The Case of India" offers a framework for identifying viable and credible climate change mitigation actions in developing countries. The framework is applied to the case of India to suggest that a large number of options to control warming gases are in India's own self-interest, and that leverage on emissions from each of these options could amount to several hundred million tons of CO2 annually over the next decade and an even larger quantity by 2030.

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IAEE Rai Victor Identifing Viable Options
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PESD releases new Working Paper on the controversy over carbon offsets from Chinese wind power

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Gang He
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In a new Working Paper, PESD researchers Gang He and Richard K. Morse offer a unique, comprehensive analysis of the biggest controversy in the global carbon market - the additionality of Chinese wind power in the Clean Development Mechanism.
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