FSI scholars approach their research on the environment from regulatory, economic and societal angles. The Center on Food Security and the Environment weighs the connection between climate change and agriculture; the impact of biofuel expansion on land and food supply; how to increase crop yields without expanding agricultural lands; and the trends in aquaculture. FSE’s research spans the globe – from the potential of smallholder irrigation to reduce hunger and improve development in sub-Saharan Africa to the devastation of drought on Iowa farms. David Lobell, a senior fellow at FSI and a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, has looked at the impacts of increasing wheat and corn crops in Africa, South Asia, Mexico and the United States; and has studied the effects of extreme heat on the world’s staple crops.
Patrick R. P. Heller
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pheller@revenuewatch.org
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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
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/
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wolak@zia.stanford.edu
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 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
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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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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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PESD releases new Working Paper on the controversy over carbon offsets from Chinese wind power
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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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Using Economics to Confront Climate Change
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PESD Director Frank Wolak will be among a number of speakers participating at Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research's Policy Forum - "Using Economics to Confront Climate Change."
Frank will be moderating a discussion of difficult challenges posed by the rapidly rising use of coal in India and China, and challenges to trade policy as studied by PESD researchers Richard Morse, Mark Thurber, and Jeremy Carl.
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Frank Wolak
Stanford University
Economics Department
579 Jane Stanford Way Stanford, CA 94305-6072
Website: https://fawolak.org/
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wolak@zia.stanford.edu
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 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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CURC Fall General Membership Meeting
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PESD research associate Richard K. Morse will be presenting "The Real Drivers of CCS in China and Implications for Climate Policy" at the Coal Utilization Research Council's Fall 2009 General Membership Meeting. Richard's presentation will reflect the research and publication of PESD's Working Paper #88.
Richard's CCS technology collaborative briefing is from 2:15PM to 2:30PM at the L'Enfant Plaza Hotel
8:30AM to 12:30PM
Capitol Visitors Center
(Below the East Plaza of the Capital Building)
Room SVC 209
1:00PM to 3:30PM
L'Enfant Plaza Hotel
Washington, D.C. 20024
Richard K. Morse
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