Grappling Daily with Hot-Button Environmental Issues
Economist Richard Newell is Dedicated to Examining Options for Reducing Human-Caused Greenhouse Gas Emissions p. 3
“They were looking for a faculty member in energy and the environment with interest in issues at the intersection of technology, environment, energy markets and policy,” he says. “And that’s precisely what I do! It sounded like a good thing to explore. One thing led to another and here I am.”
The Gendell Associate Professorship was endowed as part of a $2.15 million gift in 2005 from Jeffrey and Martha Gendell of Greenwich, Conn., to support an expanded curriculum in energy studies at the Nicholas School. The Gendells’ gift, which totaled $2.9 million when matching funds were included, endowed two new full-time faculty positions in the school’s Energy and Environment program along with an energy research fund, a speakers’ series, a visiting executives program and a general fund to support energy innovation.
Newell is a member of the American Physical Society and the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Energy Efficiency, and serves on the boards of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, the journal Energy Economics, and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. He maintains his connection with Resources for the Future as a University Fellow and is on the advisory board of the Automotive X-Prize, designed to provide an inducement to spur development of a 100-mile-per gallon vehicle.
He has served as a member of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on National Science Foundation Innovation Prizes, which in 2007 issued a report endorsing the use of innovation inducement prizes to achieve a wide range of energy, environmental and societal goals.
Newell also has served on the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Energy R&D, and the National Petroleum Council Global Oil and Gas Study Committee. In 2007, he was named a co-recipient of the inaugural Petry Research Prize for the Economics of Climate Change from the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
Newell received his doctoral degree in public policy from Harvard University. He holds a master’s degree in public affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, and bachelor’s degrees in philosophy and materials engineering from Rutgers University.
“Among the many wonderful PhD students with whom I have worked at Harvard during my 20 years on the faculty, Richard Newell stands out among the very best. He is a rising star in the firmament of environmental economics, and an international leader on scholarship on the economics of technological change in the environmental realm,” says Robert N. Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.
Although he has focused primarily on research and analysis through much of his career, Newell relishes his newfound role at the Nicholas School as a teacher, too.
“That’s been exciting,” he says. “I’m training primarily professional masters degree students. So I think to myself: what are the most important things they need to know when they leave Duke and go to work? The kinds of skills I’m focusing on—because they are things I know about—are those relevant to analyzing the effects on people and companies of government policies related to energy and the environment.”
His assignments include getting students to pore over large spreadsheets of data, write analytical and policy memos and pretend that they are staff members of a government agency assessing a particular policy issue.
“For example, I might have them look at the pros and cons of using a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the United States,” he says.
“The goal is to prepare them so they can go out and help society face the daunting environmental and energy challenges it faces today.”
Monte Basgall is senior writer and eDuke editor in Duke’s Office of News and Communications.