Web feature
[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Three UC Berkeley faculty members chosen for state advisory committee to help devise cap-and-trade program

| 01 June 2009

Three scholars from the University of California, Berkeley, have been appointed to the state's new Economic and Allocation Advisory Committee, a group charged with helping California implement the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB32).

A key charge of the 16-member committee, jointly created by the California Environmental Protection Agency and the California Air Resources Board, is to help the state design an effective greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program to help meet the goals of AB32 to reduce state greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2020.

The committee includes:

  • James Bushnell, research director at the UC Energy Institute and a lecturer at the Haas School of Business. Bushnell's research focuses on industrial organization and regulation, environmental economics, energy policy and game theoretic optimization models. He formerly served on the Market Monitoring Committee for the California Power Exchange and worked for the state Public Utilities Commission.
  • Richard Frank, executive director of the Center for Law, Energy & the Environment (CLEE) at the UC Berkeley School of Law. Frank serves as a lecturer-in-residence at the law school, where he teaches courses in environmental law and climate change. Immediately before joining Berkeley Law, he served as California's chief deputy attorney general for legal affairs. He was also a former member of the Delta Vision Task Force, an advisory body asked to develop policy recommendations for the state governor and Legislature, addressing environmental problems confronting the California Delta.
  • Dan Kammen, Class of 1935 Distinguished Professor in the Energy and Resources Group, the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the Department of Nuclear Engineering. Kammen is the founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, and director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center, both at UC Berkeley. His research and public engagement is focused on the science, engineering and policy of low-carbon energy systems, and on national and international energy and climate programs and policy. He is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

The members of the committee, which is comprised of economic, financial and policy experts, were announced on May 22.