Research

Overview

Achieving a net-zero energy transition to mitigate the impacts of climate change represents a planetary crisis and pressing public policy challenge. While economists often tout the economic efficiency of carbon pricing, in practice jurisdictions are applying a mix of policy instruments to reduce emissions, including regulations, performance standards, subsidies, and R&D funding. These “second-best” policies may be preferred by policymakers seeking to achieve additional policy objectives, such as incentivizing technological change, distributional equity, or political acceptability. However, the use of such overlapping policies can also create tradeoffs across policy goals which have been under-explored.

My research examines how alternative approaches to decarbonization manage trade-offs between environmental, economic, and social objectives. I use empirical and simulation modelling tools from economics, engineering, public policy, and environmental studies to evaluate the impact of existing policies as well as the expected impact of potential future policies across multiple objectives. 


Peer-reviewed Publications


Working Papers

Across jurisdictions, all orders of governments are continually expanding their implementation of policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the impacts of climate change. In federations like Canada, the mix of policies employed is further complicated by overlapping regulation both within and across federal and provincial/territorial governments. Canada's climate policy landscape is marked by variation in timing, effort, and approach, and driven by differences in economic structures, political ideologies, energy resources, and emissions among provinces and territories. However, a clear picture of the wide-ranging efforts undertaken across jurisdictions remains unavailable. To address this gap, we have developed a comprehensive and dynamic inventory of climate policies in Canada. This methodology paper outlines the steps taken to establish the inventory of 334 climate policies in Canada, the coding protocol used to assess policy design elements, and a description of the inventory findings. By shedding light on the complex web of climate policies in Canada, this inventory aims to provide researchers and policymakers with a clear picture of the ongoing efforts to reduce GHG emissions. It also seeks to inform future research on the impacts and interactions between policy tools in achieving a range of societal objectives.


The transportation sector is the leading contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. Incentives for biofuel production in the form of direct subsidies and tradable performance have been substantial. Although research suggests such policies are less cost-effective at reducing emissions than an explicit carbon price, a dynamic assessment that accounts for innovation may differ substantially from static cost estimates. This study evaluates cost and carbon-intensity reducing innovation in the U.S. biofuel industry and estimates the value of social benefits for comparison with the observed level of policy support. Using multi-factor experience curves, this study finds that cost declines have been significant in ethanol production, with an estimated learning rate of 21.8%. However, learning in biodiesel and renewable diesel has been much less pronounced, at 3.23% and 1.33%, respectively. Reductions in carbon intensity are found to be largely related to switching feedstocks rather than improvements in production processes. Based on the innovation rates identified in this study, current policy support for biofuels from stacked incentives is found to exceed the social benefits. This misalignment calls for a reassessment of biofuel policies to ensure they are economically and environmentally justified.




Select Policy Publications 



Opinion