Policymaking and the Energy Transition
Syllabus, Fall 2024
Wednesdays, 2pm-5pm, SRH 3.248
Instructor: Doug Lewin
Pronouns: He/him
Contact: 512-203-5405; douglas.lewin@austin.utexas.edu
Office Hours and Location: By appointment/booking via email
Course Description
The way energy is produced, moved, and consumed is changing fast. Policymakers and businesses are attempting to balance reliability, affordability, and decarbonization, typically in that order. They are often failing on all three counts.
This course will explore the history of today’s energy systems and explore current policies that will accelerate or slow down the energy transition. We’ll focus mostly on electric companies including generators and utilities, but will also explore the oil and gas industry, and both the defensive and offensive strategies they employ to deal with the energy transition. Texas will be the major focus of the course, but we’ll compare and contrast with other states and countries, too.
Each student will learn about the structure of how policy making and policy implementation happen. Each student will then choose a current and contested policy or set of policies for which they can apply that framework in a presentation to the class.
Learning Objectives
- Learn concepts and terms commonly used in energy transition discussions.
- Gain familiarity with some of the thinkers and institutions doing important work to envision a decarbonized and more just energy system.
- Gain deep understanding of utility business models, the nature and history of utility monopolies, and new models for decentralized, digitized energy systems.
- Explore the power of incumbency in energy and how it is used to either make change or stop it.
- Learn about incumbent industries’ efforts to accelerate and/or impede the energy transition
- Study the various policies and policy frameworks proposed or implemented to accelerate the energy transition.
- Understand the need to have an energy transition that includes but goes well beyond the need to reduce greenhouse emissions; explore the reliability, consumer, economic, health, and water benefits of the energy transition.
- Understand and explain how issues of justice and equity are connected to energy transition and how historically marginalized people and communities can benefit or be harmed by climate change and the energy transition.
FULL SYLLABUS ATTACHED BELOW