Note: EHE is hosting this seminar with assistance from ROSEI

Title: Charging ahead: a research agenda on electricity markets, integrated gas-grid systems and cross-border electricity geopolitics

Abstract: Electrification and clean energy development pose challenging market design and policy problems to planning and operations of electric power systems. In this talk, Chiara Lo Prete will survey her past, present, and future research applying economic, optimization and statistical models to study the design of electricity markets, the operations of power grids and closely related infrastructures/markets, and the geopolitics of cross-border electricity trade.

Bio: Chiara Lo Prete is Associate Professor of Energy Economics in the John and Willie Leone Family Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research centers on the economics of energy markets, focusing on the areas of competition and design of electricity markets, natural gas market design to enhance grid reliability, geopolitics and energy security, and the impacts of environmental regulations on electric power generation. She and her team develop mathematical models and apply empirical methods to study electricity market structures for resource adequacy and wind energy integration, interdependent natural gas and electric power systems, the weaponization of electricity trade, emission leakage and cross-product manipulation. Before joining Penn State, Lo Prete was a Ziff Environmental Fellow at Harvard University. She earned a B.A. in Economics (summa cum laude) from LUISS University, an M.A. in Energy Economics from the Scuola Mattei, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Geography and Environmental Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University.