January 6, 2010

John Weyant, Professor (Research) of Management Science and Engineering

Targets for climate policies at the national and international levels were very poorly assessed, evaluated and communicated prior to the Copenhagen climate summit, and now urgently need to be re-analyzed. Using the results of the recent Energy Modeling Forum Global, US and EU climate policy model comparison exercises as points of departure, this talk looks at what kinds of formal and informal global climate policy agreements might be desirable and/or feasible. The relationship between global objectives and national and international policy architectures is crucial, but often ignored or done inconsistently. We take a hard look here at the large gap in public discourse that currently exists between what might be desirable and what might actually be feasible. We end with a set of pragmatic suggestions for how to proceed. The old policy initiatives did not work, but promising new ideas are emerging, so the need to at least keep the accounting straight has never been more important. Despite their immense popularity, “aspirational” goals and objectives have not, are not and will not ever work.



Source: energyseminar.stanford.edu/node/207

1. Global Climate Architectural Policy
2. Demystifying and De-Jargoning the Smart Grid
3. U.S. Shale Gas: From Resources and Reserves to Carbon Isotope Anomalies
4. Extending the Grid: Transmission Siting Issues and How to Resolve Them
5. Integrating More Than 50% Wind on the Grid: A Case Study
6. Controlling Climate Change after Copenhagen
7. The Energy Challenge and the Case for Fusion
8. COP15 and the Stanford Student Experience
9. China's Growing Global Influence: A Solar Energy Perspective

The Energy Seminar is produced by the Woods Institute and the Precourt Institute for Energy (PIE) at Stanford University. and is comprised of an interdisciplinary series of talks primarily by Stanford experts on a broad range of energy topics.







The Precourt Institute for Energy (PIE) has been established as a new independent institute at Stanford that engages in a broad-ranging, interdisciplinary program of research and education on energy - applying fundamental research to the problem of supplying energy in environmentally and economically acceptable ways, using it efficiently, and facing the behavioral, social, and policy challenges of creating new energy systems for the U.S. and the world.