About this Event
This is a hybrid event. For those attending virtually, a Zoom link will be sent out the day of the event.
Boxed lunches will be available to go following the talk!
For many decades, utility pricing policies have been aimed at encouraging more efficient use of electricity and placing more of the cost burden on those who are "less prudent" in their use. This goal has justified electricity pricing that penalizes households that consume higher quantities, so-called "energy hogs.”
In reality, greater household consumption is primarily associated with such benign characteristics as more household occupants, elderly and very young occupants, hotter locations, and failure or inability to install rooftop solar.
Electricity consumption constitutes a small share of energy usage and carbon emissions for which an individual is responsible. The vast majority is due to activities for which no such penalty pricing exists, including air travel, personal vehicle transportation, and consumption of goods and services.
Kleinman Center Visiting Scholar Severin Borenstein explores how such penalty pricing disproportionately harms low-income and low-mobility individuals while allowing wealthy individuals to keep on consuming.
Speaker
Severin Borenstein is E.T. Grether Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy at the Haas School of Business and faculty director of the Energy Institute at Haas. He is also Director emeritus of the University of California Energy Institute (1994-2014). He received his AB from UC Berkeley and PhD in Economics from MIT. His research focuses on business competition, strategy, and regulation. He has published extensively on the airline industry, the oil and gasoline industries, and electricity markets. His current research projects include the economics of renewable energy, economic policies for reducing greenhouse gases, and alternative models of retail electricity pricing. Borenstein is also a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, MA.
Please note this is a hybrid event. We look forward to welcoming guests to the Kleinman Center’s Energy Forum. In accordance with the University of Pennsylvania’s COVID-19 guidelines, masks are optional for all visitors. Boxed lunches will be available to go following the event!
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, 220 S. 34th St., Philadelphia, United States
USD 0.00