Richard Morse was the featured speaker at the UT Energy Symposium on November 3^rd.  His talk, entitled, “Beyond Climate Policy: Reconciling Climate Change and the ‘Coal Renaissance’”, analyzed global coal markets and their relationship to climate change.

Because coal is the single largest source of global CO2 emissions, Morse argued that any attempt to combat climate change requires a strategy to address coal.  Morse argued that existing climate policy frameworks are not accomplishing this at the scale required, and suggested new frameworks to address the coal and climate challenge that can be deployed in existing energy markets with limited government intervention and support.

PESD associate director Mark Thurber addressed MBA students in the Stanford-Tsinghua Exchange Program (http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/cgbe/globalexperiences/step.html) on the global manufacturing ecosystem and China’s niche within it.

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Richard Morse joined Michael Gibbs of the Cal EPA and Larry Goulder and Jim Sweeny of Stanford to discuss key issues in California’s carbon market and remaining challenges at the 2011 Silicon Valley Energy Summit.

The Silicon Valley Energy Summit is a signature event of the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and the Stanford University Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, attracting a broad range of executives and representatives from influential Silicon Valley companies and organizations. Practical and inspirational, this "action conference" serves as a manual for sustainable business by combining current best practices with a guide to upcoming technologies and government regulations.

PESD visiting scholar Pär Holmberg from the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Stockholm led this Energy Working Group talk.

Holmberg discussed (1) the multi-unit auction used in wholesale electricity markets where producers sell their electricity to retailers and large consumers, (2) a theoretical model of producers' strategic bidding behavior and (3) how bids are influenced by contracts and the market design.

The presentation was based on his paper "The Supply Function Equilibrium and its Policy Implications for Wholesale Electricity Markets", which was co-authored with David Newbery (University of Cambridge, UK).

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Pär Holmberg is an Associate Professor in Economics and has a PhD in Electric Power Engineering. He is working at the Research Institute of Industrial Economics (IFN), Stockholm, and is an associate of the Electricity Policy Research Group, University of Cambridge. Pär's research focuses on wholesale electricity markets, especially strategic bidding behavior in electricity auctions.