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Author Archives: Maximilian Auffhammer
Nest(ing)
Happy earth day everyone! I briefly contemplated a doom and gloom post about the state of the global climate and lack of regulation. But let’s focus on what does work, albeit at a much smaller scale, instead of what doesn’t … Continue reading
Knowledge is (Less) Power.
Economists love prices. In fact, when we want people to reduce their consumption of something, we argue we should make that thing more expensive. This is usually done via a tax. My undergrads know, of course, that how effective a … Continue reading
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Tagged electricity, energy efficiency, Randomized Control Trials
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Carbon vs. Energy Intensity
Modeling the future emissions of global carbon is big business (albeit on an academic scale). There are dozens of groups with their more or less black box models, which if fed scenarios for e.g. income, population and technological change, will … Continue reading
Doha Schmoha
On Saturday another wildly unsuccessful round of climate negotiations concluded with applying a band aid to solve the rapidly accelerating climate problem. The 1997 Kyoto accord was extended to 2020. If you think this is a good thing, you are … Continue reading
Cooling China And Then Some.
Since my dissertation writing days I have been interested in forecasts of China’s greenhouse gas emissions. I am clearly not the only person interested in this topic, yet we environmental/energy economists have something to contribute on top of the excellent … Continue reading
N(Fracking)IMBY
The natural gas fracking debate has given rise to another interesting issue. On the one hand we like the cheap natural gas. The switch to natural gas for producing power has partially contributed to decreased emissions of global warming gases … Continue reading
Don’t Hate the Pipeline: Hate the Fuel—Or Better Yet, Tax It.
Alberta’s tar sands—or, as pitchmen prefer to call them, oil sands—are to transportation as cow dung is to cooking: a dirty way to reach a goal. Cleaner alternatives, like LPG for cooking or even Saudi oil for cars, exist, but … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged carbon tax, greenhouse gas (GHG), tar sands/oil sands
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Marginal vs. Average Generation: The Case of the Electric Car
I have a fantasy. I want a cool looking electric car, that gets 50+mpg and is not outrageously more expensive to buy and operate than a VW Golf when driven 12,000 miles per year. I was excited when I saw that the … Continue reading
The Lunch Table: Peer Pressured into Efficiency
At the Energy Institute lunch table, we talk about energy efficiency almost daily. If you buy that 12 mpg SUV you better have a good reason for it. This is the first of a few posts discussing personal energy efficiency … Continue reading
