The Future of U.S. Climate Policy
presented by
Professor Catherine D. Wolfram
William F. Pounds Professor of Energy Economics, Professor of Applied Economics
MIT Sloan School of Management
When & Where:
Wednesday, March 6, 2024 at 7:30 pm
326 Natural Science Building (288 Farm Lane)
Abstract
Climate change is the world’s biggest coordination problem, and countries need to work together to address it. The U.S. passed landmark climate legislation in 2022 with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). But the IRA, which emphasizes subsidies for clean energy production, sets the U.S. on a different path from many other countries, which are relying on carbon pricing. Dr. Wolfram will draw on her experience serving in the U.S Treasury at the beginning of the Biden Administration as well as her academic research to discuss several possible trajectories for U.S. policy and global climate cooperation.
Bio
Catherine Wolfram is the William F. Pounds Professor of Energy Economics and a Professor of Applied Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. She previously served as the Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. From March 2021 to October 2022, she served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate and Energy Economics at the U.S. Treasury, while on leave from UC Berkeley. Before leaving for government service, she was the Program Director of the National Bureau of Economic Research's Environment and Energy Economics Program and a research affiliate at the Energy Institute at Haas. Before joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she was an Assistant Professor of Economics at Harvard. Wolfram has published extensively on the economics of energy markets. Her work has analyzed rural electrification programs in the developing world, energy efficiency programs in the US, the effects of environmental regulation on energy markets and the impact of privatization and restructuring in the US and UK. She is currently working on several projects at the intersection of climate and trade. She received a PhD in Economics from MIT in 1996 and an AB from Harvard in 1989.
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