2nd Annual Workshop on the Economics of Electricity Policy and Markets

Werner Antweiler (UBC), "The Economics of Grid-Scale Electricity Storage: Location Heterogeneity and Business Models"

Adonis Yatchew (UofT), "Distributed Energy and its Revolutionary Effects on the Electricity Industry" 

Discussants:
Cheryl Terry (AESO), "Energy Storage In Alberta"
Pierre-Olivier Pineau (HEC Montréal), "Decarbonizing the North American Northeast Power Sector: BAU or Integration?"

Brian Rivard (Ivey), "On the Efficiency of Capacity Pricing and Capacity Cost Recovery: a Case Study on Ontario and Alberta"

Susan Pope (FTI), "Market Power Mitigation in Ontario and Learnings from the US"

Discussants: 
Derek Olmstead (AESO), "Incidence and allocation of electricity capacity costs in Alberta" 

Jeff Church (UofC), "Intervention in Electricity Markets" 

Maya Papineau (Carleton), "Utilities Included: Split Incentives in Commercial Electricity Contract"

Mario Samano (HEC), "Incentivized Mergers and Cost Efficiency: Evidence from the Electricity Distribution Industry"

Discussants:
Nic Rivers (University of Ottawa), "Electricity Mergers and Split Incentives"
Ben Grunfeld (Navigant Consulting)

Cocktail Reception and Dinner at Leña Restaurante
Sponsored by Power Advisory LLC

After receiving his doctorate in economics from the University of Toronto, Werner Antweiler joined the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia in 1996. He is currently an Associate Professor, Chair in International Trade Policy, and Chair of the Strategy and Business Economics Division. He is also the author of the textbook "Elements of Environmental Management". His research is predominantly empirical and spans topics in international economics, environmental economics, energy economics, and applied econometrics. His most recent research focuses on the cross-border trade in electricity, feed-in-tariffs for renewable energy, and the effect of fuel taxes on “greener driving". Professor Antweiler is also a frequent commentator on business and public policy issues.

Jeffrey Church is a Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Calgary. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley and a B.A. (Honours) in Economics from the University of Calgary. Dr. Church was the 1995-1996 T. D. MacDonald Chair in Industrial Economics at the Competition Bureau.  He is the coauthor of a book on the regulation of natural gas pipelines in Canada, a text in industrial organization, and author of a monograph on the competitive implications of vertical and conglomerate mergers for the European Commission. Dr. Church has won numerous teaching awards, including a Student Union Teaching Excellence Award. He has acted as an expert on a wide range of regulatory and competition policy matters and participated in the regulatory and policy debates on the restructuring of telecommunications in Canada and electricity in Alberta. Since 1998 he has been listed in the Directory of Competition Economists in The International Who’s Who of Competition Lawyers. For more information see http://econ.ucalgary.ca/profiles/162-33623.

Lisa DeMarco is a lawyer with over two decades of experience in law, regulation, policy and advocacy relating to energy and climate change. She represents several governments and leading energy clients in a wide variety of natural gas, electricity, pipeline, and energy storage matters before various regulatory tribunals, including the Ontario Energy Board and the National Energy Board. She has been an adjunct professor at Osgoode Hall Law School and lectures regularly. She is ranked by Chamber’s Global as one of the world’s leading climate change lawyers and regularly attends and advises on United Nations Climate negotiations. She is ranked and repeatedly recommended by Lexpert, Expert Guide, International Who’s Who, and Chambers Canada as a leading energy (oil and gas) and environment lawyer. She was appointed to the Premier of Ontario’s now completed Climate Change Advisory Panel, Ontario’s Clean Energy Task Force, and Climate Action Group.. She is currently on the editorial board of the Carbon and Climate Law Review. She is a graduate of Western University (BSc. Hon. 1990), the University of Toronto (MSc. 1992), Osgoode Hall Law School, York University (LLB 1995) and the Vermont Law School (MSEL, summa cum laude 1995). She is called to the bar in Ontario and England.

Benjamin Grunfeld is a Managing Director in the global Energy practice at Navigant and the Canadian power and utilities sector leader.  He is a trusted advisor to senior leaders across the energy sector value chain in Canada, including electricity and natural gas utilities, independent power companies, manufacturers, regulators, end-users, and governments.  He has considerable consulting project experience in the areas of strategy and operations, mergers and acquisitions, project development and finance, energy efficiency and demand-side management programming, power generation procurement, regulatory economics, electricity market design and operations, and energy policy.  He is a recognized expert on the energy sector in Canada and has served as an expert witness in regulatory and civil matters.  Benjamin has also worked in vertically integrated and restructured markets across North America, as well as a range of developed and emerging economies around the world.  Benjamin has an M.Sc. in Management and Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a B.Sc. in Applied Mathematics and Electrical Engineering from Queen’s University.

Guy Holburn is the Suncor Chair in Energy Policy and Professor of Business, Economics, and Public Policy at the Ivey Business School. His area of expertise is in the intersection of business strategy and public policy. Much of his research is applied to strategy and policy issues in the energy and utilities sectors. He has been awarded major research grants by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Olin Foundation, the University of California Energy Institute, California Public Utilities Commission, Ontario Centres of Excellence, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. He is currently leading a multi-year research program on the regulation of the energy sector in Canada. He has published in leading economics and management journals, and has written for national media. Prior to his academic career, Holburn worked as a management consultant for Bain and Company in the U.K. and South Africa. He received his MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and his BA Hons. (First Class) from Cambridge University.

Derek Olmstead

David Luke Oates

Dr. David Luke Oates is an Associate at the Brattle Group with more than eight years of experience in the electricity industry.  He helps clients address complex market design, analysis, and modeling questions in the context of wholesale capacity, energy, and clean energy markets.  Dr. Oates has worked across nine electricity markets in Canada, the U.S., and internationally on behalf of a range of clients including market operators, industry stakeholders, utilities, merchant generation and transmission owners, regulators, and law firms. He has extensive experience developing and evaluating capacity market demand curves, qualification, mitigation, and penalty mechanisms, and other detailed capacity market design elements, having worked on these issues on behalf of PJM, MISO, IESO, and AESO.  Dr. Oates has also worked on the design and assessment of markets for clean energy and distributed resources in New England, New York, and Ontario.

Tim O'Neill

Dr. O'Neill is founder and president of O’Neill Strategic Economics and was the first H. Ian MacDonald Visiting Economist in the Ontario Ministry of Finance from 2005 to 2007. Dr. O’Neill served as Executive Vice President & Chief Economist of BMO from 1994 to 2005.  Prior to joining the Bank, he was President of the Atlantic Provinces Economic Council from 1988 to 1993.  Before that he taught in the Department of Economics at St. Mary's University in Halifax. Since the early 1970s he has served as a consultant to a number of  provincial governments as well as to the Canadian federal government. In his research, consulting and advisory  activities, Dr. O'Neill has focused extensively on applied, economic policy-related issues. His work has  ranged from macroeconomic forecasts and assessment of key sectors of the economy to examination of broader themes such as the political economy of globalization. Dr. O'Neill has been Director and Chair of the Independent Electricity System Operator (Ontario) since 2010 and is Chair of the Economic Advisory Board to the Premier of Prince Edward Island. Dr. O’Neill was the first Canadian economist to be elected to the Board of Governors of the Washington-based National Association for Business Economics (NABE) and served as Vice President in 2001-02 and as President in 2002-03.

Pierre-Oliver Pineau

Pierre-Oliver Pineau (PhD, HEC Montréal, 2000) is a professor at the Department of Decision Sciences of HEC Montréal and holds the Chair in Energy Sector Management since December 2013. He is an energy policy and management specialist, with a focus on electricity reforms. He has published many papers on the energy sector, most of them exploring the links between energy and some aspects of sustainable development. He participates regularly in the public debate on energy and has authored many reports for the government and other public organizations. He is a CIRANO Fellow, member of the CAEE, CIRODD and institute EDDEC. Before joining HEC Montreal, he was an associate professor at the School of Public Administration, University of Victoria (2001-2006).

Nicholas Rivers is the Canada Research Chair in Climate and Energy Policy at the University of Ottawa.  His research focuses on the economic evaluation of environmental policies, using econometric and computational methods. He has received awards and support for his research from the Trudeau Foundation, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, and the National Science and Engineering Research Council. He currently serves as a co-editor of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. He earned his Master's and doctorate degrees in Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, British Columbia, and also holds a Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering. 

Mario Samano obtained his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Arizona in May 2012. His research focuses on applications of empirical industrial organization techniques to analyze policies that affect electricity, automobiles, and gasoline markets and it has been published at the Journal of Political Economy, the Economic Journal, and the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control among others. He is also interested in the economics behind new business models used by tech companies as well as the developments in machine learning techniques. While at the University of Arizona he taught introductory courses on Economics and Business at the undergraduate level. He also holds a Bachelors in Mathematics and a Masters in Economics. He joined HEC Montreal in the Summer of 2012 and teaches the Empirical Industrial Organization course in the masters program as well as the core MBA course in Microeconomics.

Cheryl has extensive and diverse experience in the electricity industry, acting in many senior roles.  Cheryl has spent the majority of her career with the Alberta Electric System Operator (AESO) and its predecessor organizations mainly in market design, policy and market strategy and most recently as the director of Corporate Economics.  While at the AESO, Cheryl was co-chair of the Alberta Wholesale Market Policy Taskforce, initiated by the Alberta Department of Energy (in 2004-05) to consider market evolution options.   As part of her career, Cheryl worked in industry in various roles ranging from acting as the Director of Market Services, Western Power Group for TransCanada responsible for regulatory and policy direction in western power markets and a number of years with SaskPower prior to coming to Alberta.

Dr. Burcin Unel is the Energy Policy Director at the Institute for Policy Integrity. Her current work focuses on socially efficient policy design in the areas of energy, environment, and health, building on her expertise in microeconomic theory and industrial organization. She has authored academic scholarship, policy briefs, public comments, testimonies, and guidance documents, with the aim of helping policymakers and utility regulators improve the quality of federal and state energy policy decision making. She also leads Policy Integrity’s stakeholder involvement in New York State’s Reforming the Energy Vision initiative and related state energy policy programs. Before joining Policy Integrity, she held faculty positions at the University of Florida, and the Department of Economics at Bogaziçi University in Turkey. Dr. Unel received a B.A. in Economics from Bogaziçi University, and a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Florida.