Speaker and Moderator Bios

Bios are listed in order of presentation:

Brian Murray

Brian Murray is Director for Economic Analysis at the Nicholas Institute and Research Professor of Environmental Economics at the Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University.  Dr. Murray is widely recognized for his work on the economics of climate change policy, including the design of cap-and-trade policy elements to address cost containment and inclusion of offsets from traditionally uncapped sectors such as forestry and agriculture.  He routinely advises members of the United States Congress and their   staff on climate change legislative proposals. He is currently leading an effort to develop protocols and methods for reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) in the Amazon region.  Dr. Murray has been invited as a co-author of several national and international assessments of forest resources, especially related to climate change. Of particular note, he was a convening lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry. He has convened several forums of economic modeling experts to examine and communicate the results of their climate, energy and land use policy efforts to the public and private sectors. His research has examined the economic effects of traditional command-based regulatory strategies for pollution control and more market-oriented approaches such as cap-and-trade programs and emission taxes. His work has been published in books, edited volumes, and professional journals. Prior to coming to the Nicholas Institute in 2006, Dr. Murray was Director of the Center for Regulatory Economics and Policy Research at RTI International, a university-affiliated not-for-profit research institution.  He received Ph.D. and Masters degrees in Resource Economics and Policy from Duke University, and a B.S. in Economics and Finance from the University of Delaware.

Joe Aldy

Joe Aldy is Special Assistant to the President for Energy and the Environment at the National Economic Council and the Office of Energy and Climate Change in the White House. He is on leave as a Fellow from Resources for the Future. His research has focused on climate change policy, mortality risk valuation (value of statistical   life), energy subsidies to low-income households, and energy policy. Aldy has previously served as Co-Director of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements, Co-Director of the International Energy Workshop, Treasurer of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, and as an adjunct professor at Georgetown University and Johns Hopkins University. He served as Senior Economist and Senior Advisor on the staff to the Council of Economic Advisers, where he covered the environmental, energy, and natural resources portfolio. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University, and Master of Environmental Management and B.A. degrees from Duke University.

Rick Clayton 

Rick Clayton is the Chief of the Division of Administrative Statistics and Labor Turnover at the Bureau of Labor Statistics.  His assignments include the Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages, the Business Employment Dynamics program, the Job   Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) and the new Green Goods and Services Survey now under development.  He has been at BLS for 35 years, and holds a Bachelors in Business and Masters in Economics from Ohio University.

Etan Gumerman 

Etan Gumerman helps direct the Climate Change Policy Partnership and leads energy and climate policy research projects for the Nicholas Institute.   Currently he is leading a project evaluating the potential for renewable energy in the South.  His other recent research topics have included:  assessing cost-effective energy efficiency potential in the South and advising Utah as to GHG emissions reduction policies. Etan’s background is in engineering and policy with considerable experience in modeling. Before joining the Nicholas Institute, he was involved with a wide range of energy and climate change policy projects. At Lawrence Berkeley National Lab he was the lead modeler and analyst for the Scenarios for a Clean Energy Future project, coordinating the efforts of scientists at five national laboratories. He has investigated appliance standards’ effects on energy, load shapes, peak effects, and emissions. He has worked with California’s Air Resources Board evaluating the effectiveness of California’s Smog Check program.  Etan holds a Masters in Engineering and Policy from Washington University and a B.A. in Environmental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.

Bruce Arnold

Bruce Arnold is a Principal Analyst in the Microeconomic Studies Division of the Congressional Budget Office, where he has been employed since 1990.  For most of the past 20 years he has worked on issues relating to international trade, but more recently he has worked on issues relating to global warming.  He has produced three surveys of general equilibrium modeling studies:  the first examining studies of the North American Free-Trade Agreement, the second looking at agricultural trade liberalization in the Doha Round of international trade negotiations, and the third concerning the effects of greenhouse gas emission-reduction programs on employment by industry.  Before his tenure at the Congressional Budget Office he spent two years at the General Accounting Office, and before that one and one-half years at the Department of State.

Adele Morris

Adele Morris is a Fellow and Policy Director for Climate and Energy Economics at The Brookings Institution. Her expertise and interests include the economics of policies related to climate change, energy, natural resources, and public finance. She joined Brookings in July 2008 from the Joint Economic Committee (JEC) of the U.S. Congress, where she spent a year as a Senior Economist covering energy and climate issues. Before the JEC, Adele served nine years with the U.S. Treasury Department as its chief natural resource economist, working on climate, energy, agriculture, and radio spectrum issues. On assignment to the U.S. Department of State in 2000, she was the lead U.S. negotiator on land use and forestry issues in the international climate change treaty process. Prior to joining the Treasury, she served as the Senior Economist for environmental affairs at the President’s Council of Economic Advisers during the development of the Kyoto Protocol. She began her career at the Office of Management and Budget, where she conducted regulatory oversight of agriculture and natural resource agencies. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University, an M.S. in Mathematics from the University of Utah, and a B.A. from Rice University.

Neal Elliott

Neal Elliott is the Associate Director for Research of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), coordinating ACEEE's overall research efforts. Elliott has been with ACEEE since 1993, founding the Industrial and Agricultural Programs. Elliott is an internationally recognized expert and author on energy efficiency, energy efficiency programs and policies, electric motor systems, combined heat and power and clean distributed energy, analysis of energy efficiency and energy markets, and a frequent speaker at domestic and international conferences. Prior to joining ACEEE, Elliott was an adjunct associate professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University and Senior Engineering Project Manager at the N. C. Alternative Energy Corp. (now Advanced Energy) where he founding director of the Industrial Energy Laboratory. Prior to AEC he worked as N.C. Wood Assistance Team Leader for the Industrial Extension Service and Department of Wood and Paper Science at North Carolina State University. Elliott received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University, and was a Dean's Fellow and received a Ph.D. from Duke University. He is a registered Professional Engineer in North Carolina and has six patents in the area of thermal storage and produce processing. 

Anne Smith

Dr. Anne E. Smith, a vice president at Charles River Associates, leads CRA’s Climate & Sustainability group.  She specializes in integrated assessment of environmental/energy policies and corporate compliance strategy risk management.  She has gained particular recognition for her contributions on the design and performance of emissions trading programs.  Over the past twenty years, Dr. Smith has prepared many analyses and papers on the costs and effectiveness of policies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and testified in U.S. Congressional hearings on the economics of alternative approaches to climate policy.  She has been a co-author on analyses of the economic impacts of every major Federal cap-and-trade bill since the McCain-Lieberman Bill in 2003, in addition to several of the state and regional policy proposals, including California’s AB32.  She also assists companies in the energy and energy-intensive sectors in assessing and managing their corporate risks from climate policy.  She has recently been focusing her research on designing policies to generate the types of energy research and development necessary to enable the technological transformation necessary to achieve deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.  Before joining CRA, Dr. Smith was a vice president at Decision Focus Incorporated, leading the company’s policy analysis practice.  She has also served as an economist in the Office of Policy Planning and Evaluation at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. She holds a B.A. in economics from Duke University, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Stanford University, with a Ph.D. Minor in Engineering-Economic Systems.

Trevor Houser 

Trevor Houser is Director of the Energy & Climate Practice at the Rhodium Group (RHG), a specialized advisory partnership based in New York conducting original economic research on complex global themes. He is also a Visiting Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International  Economics in Washington, DC. His work focuses on energy markets, environmental regulation, international energy security and global climate change. Mr. Houser is an adjunct professor at the City College of New York, his alma mater, and Visiting Fellow at the school’s Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies. During 2009, Mr. Houser served as Senior Advisor to the US Special Envoy for Climate Change, where he worked with both the State Department and Department of Energy to develop and execute the Obama Administration’s strategy for US-China engagement on clean energy and climate change and served on the US negotiating team in Copenhagen. Mr. Houser speaks regularly to corporate, government and public audiences and has testified before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, the Congressional Committee on Security and Cooperation in Europe and the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Mr. Houser is a member of the National Committee on US-China Relations and serves on the Advisory Board of the Center on US-China Relations at the Asia Society. 

Kevin Kennedy 

Kevin Kennedy is the Assistant Executive Officer in charge of the Office of Climate Change at the California Air Resources Board. In this role, he has broad responsibility for overseeing the implementation of the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB 32). Prior to this appointment, Mr. Kennedy served as the chief of the Program Evaluation Branch in the Office of Climate Change, where he led the team responsible for evaluating and developing market-based compliance mechanisms, incentives, voluntary actions, offsets and other approaches for achieving emission reductions in support of AB 32. As chief, he was integrally involved in the development of the AB 32 Scoping Plan. The staff in the branch has the primary responsibility for developing the regulations that will create California's cap-and-trade program. Mr. Kennedy holds a Ph.D. from the Energy and Resources Group at University of California, Berkeley, and has more than 20 years experience in energy and environmental policy.

Robert Pollin 

Robert Pollin is Professor of Economics and founding Co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.  His research centers on macroeconomics, conditions for low-wage workers in the U.S. and globally, the analysis of financ ial markets, and the economics of building a clear-energy economy in the U.S.  He is currently consulting with the U.S. Department of Energy  on the economic analysis of clean energy investments.  He has worked with the United Nations Development Program and the United Nations Economic Commission on Africa on policies to promote to promote decent employment expansion and poverty reduction in Latin America and more recently, sub-Saharan Africa.  He has also worked with the Joint Economic Committee of the U.S. Congress and as a member of the Capital Formation Subcouncil of the U.S. Competiveness Policy Council.

Suzanne Tegen 

Suzanne Tegen is a Senior Energy Analyst at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Her focus is economic impacts from wind and other electricity resources as well as renewable energy policy analysis. She recently spent one year at the Department of Energy headquarters in Washington D.C., as NREL's liaison to the Wind and Water  Power Program. Suzanne has her PhD in Energy Policy from the University of Colorado and did her undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before graduate school, she worked at the Center for Resource Solutions in San Francisco, and for the U.S. Antarctic Program at McMurdo and South Pole stations. She is a board member of the Women of Wind Energy, and lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Alex Barron 

Alex Barron is currently professional staff for climate and energy issues with the House Committee on Energy and Commerce where he worked closely on H.R. 2454, the American Clean Energy and Security Act.  Previously, he served as an American Chemical Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science   Congressional Science Policy Fellow in the Office of Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), where he worked closely on the Boxer-Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act.  He received his Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from Princeton University.

Neil Brown

Neil Brown is an advisor to the United States Senate’s most senior Republican, Richard G. Lugar of Indiana.  He serves as a Senior Professional Staff Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, with responsibility for energy security and the Nunn-Lugar non-proliferation program.  Neil earned masters degrees in political theory and forced   migration while studying as a Rhodes Scholar at University of Oxford (UK). He also holds a BA from Harvard University.  He has done substantial field work while living in South Asia, Namibia and Egypt, and he has previously worked with the Harvard Institute for International Development and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.  In 2009, Neil was a Washington Fellow of the National Review Institute.  He is a board member of the Association of American Rhodes Scholars, a trustee of the Merton College Charitable Corporation.  Neil is from Iowa, where his family farm is located.

Alan Krupnick

Alan is Research Director, Senior Fellow and Co-Director of the Center for Energy Economics and Policy at Resources for the Future.  His research focuses on analyzing environmental issues, in particular, the benefits, costs, and design of air pollution policies, both in the United States and in developing countries. His research also addresses the valuation of health and ecological  improvements, risk prioritization, particularly in food safety, introducing uncertainty into benefit-cost analysis, and environmental policy design in developing countries. Krupnick has served as a consultant to state governments, federal agencies, private corporations, the Canadian government, the European Union, the World Health Organization, and the World Bank. He co-chaired a federal advisory committee that counseled the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on new ozone and particulate standards. Krupnick also served as senior economist on the President's Council of Economic Advisers, advising the Clinton administration on environmental and natural resource policy issues. He is a regular member of expert committees from the National Academy of Sciences and has served on a Royal Society of Canada committee analyzing ambient air quality standard setting in Canada. Alan Krupnick received his PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland in 1980.

Nat Keohane

Nathaniel Keohane is Chief Economist at Environmental Defense Fund.  Dr. Keohane oversees EDF’s economic analysis and helps to shape the organization’s advocacy for market-based environmental policies across a range of program areas, including climate, air quality, energy, water, ecosystems, and oceans.  His particular focus has been on climate change policy at both the domestic and international levels. Dr. Keohane is also an Adjunct Professor of Law at New York University; serves as a member of the US EPA’s Advisory Council on Clean Air Compliance; and is a lead author on the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (Working Group III). Before coming to EDF, Dr. Keohane was Associate Professor of Economics at the Yale School of Management.  He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2001, and his B.A. from Yale College in 1993.