February 10, 2021 - 11:00 AM - 12:30 PM Eastern Time (ET)

Social Dimensions of the Energy Transition

Event Description:

Past sociotechnical transitions have had far-reaching distributional implications, and the current transition towards a decarbonized energy system is no different. Even well-designed policy frameworks for energy system transformation will result in winners and losers. Similarly, the negative impacts of climate change are unevenly distributed. Understanding and addressing such asymmetries will be critical to sustain the transition at a pace and scale required by domestic and international policy commitments. In this webinar session, two expert presenters will offer insights from recent research on energy transition impacts, and identify policy measures and practices – such as inclusive decision making or targeted support for vulnerable communities – to foster resilience and avert economic hardship.

Participants

Speaker:
Stephen Ansolabehere
Harvard

Stephen Ansolabehere is the Frank G. Thompson Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is an expert in public opinion and elections, and has published extensively on elections, mass media, and representation, political economy, and public opinion, especially concerning energy and the environment. He is author of five books: Cheap and Clean,The Media Game, Going Negative, American Government, and The End of Inequality. He is a Carnegie Scholar (2000), a Hoover National Fellow (1994), and Truman Scholar (1982) and was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007. He is the director of the Center for American Political Studies at Harvard, as well as principal investigator of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a collaborative effort of over 60 universities and colleges in the United States.
Speaker:
Amy Glasmeier
MIT

Amy Glasmeier is professor of Economic Geography and Regional Planning. She runs LRISA, the lab on Regional Innovation and Spatial Analysis, in DUSP. Glasmeier is also a Founding Editor of the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, a journal which publishes multi-disciplinary international research on the spatial dimensions of contemporary socio-economic-political change. Glasmeier's research focuses economic opportunities for communities and individuals through the investigation of the role of geographic access and the effect of locational accident on human development.
Moderator:
Christopher Knittel
MIT

Christopher Knittel is the George P Shultz Professor of Energy Economics and a Professor of Applied Economics in the Sloan School of Management at MIT. He directs the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR) at MIT. CEEPR, established in 1977 is the hub for social science work related to energy and the environment. Knittel is also the Deputy Director for Policy of the MIT Energy Initiative, the hub for energy research at MIT. Finally, along with Meredith Fowlie at UC Berkeley, he co-directs the Environmental and Energy Economics Program at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Formerly, Knittel was on the faculty at UC Davis and Boston University. He is the former co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics, and an associate editor of the Journal of Transportation Economics and Policy, and Journal of Energy Markets, having previously served as an associate editor of The American Economic Journal — Economic Policy and The Journal of Industrial Economics.