Department of Economics Seminar Series: Pipelines, Negawatts, and Exploration for Fossil Resources

In the absence of a global price on carbon emissions, advocates of climate policy have pushed for supply-side restrictions on fossil resources, funding research into low-carbon energy technologies, and mandates to increase the efficiency of appliances, vehicles, and buildings. To compare the short-run and long-run effects of these policy options, I develop an endogenous growth model with profit-driven exploration for depletable fossil resources, innovation in clean technologies for accessing renewable resources, and innovation in technologies for converting fossil and renewable energy into energy services. A supply-side policy unambiguously reduces short-run extraction of fossil resources, and by altering innovation in efficiency technologies, it can reduce extraction by even more in the long run. In contrast, an efficiency policy can actually increase short-run extraction of fossil resources (“backfire”) by making each unit of the resource more productive. A backfiring policy tends to backfire more strongly over time, as depletion increases and technology improves. An efficiency policy that initially reduces fossil resource extraction becomes more likely to backfire as depletion increases but less likely to backfire as technology improves. Event Ticket / RSVP Info: Free and open to the public Event “More Info” Link: http://econ.ucalgary.ca/seminarseries/winter2014

Location:

SS 423

Speaker:

Derek Lemoine, University of Arizona

More information at http://www.ucalgary.ca/events/calendar/department-economics-seminar-series-pipelines-negawatts-and-exploration-fossil-resources