Speaker Bios

Philip R. Sharp
President, Resources for the Future

Phil Sharp, a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Indiana from 1975 to 1995 and a prominent authority on energy and environmental policy, was appointed president of Resources for the Future on September 1, 2005. Sharp's career combines extensive academic and political experience.

Sharp was Congressional chair of the National Commission on Energy Policy, a panel established by the Hewlett Foundation and other major foundations to make energy policy recommendations to the federal government. In Congress, he took a key leadership role in the development of major energy legislation. He was a driving force behind the Energy Policy Act of 1992, which led to the restructuring of the wholesale electricity market, promoted renewable energy, established more rigorous energy-efficiency standards, and encouraged use of alternative fuels. He also helped to develop a critical part of the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments, providing for a market-based emissions allowance trading system.

Sharp served on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, where he chaired the Fossil and Synthetic Fuels Subcommittee from 1981 to 1987 and the Energy and Power Subcommittee from 1987 to 1995. He also was a member of the House Interior and Insular Affairs Committee, where he was a member of the Energy and Environment Subcommittee and the Water and Power Resources Subcommittee.

Following his decision not to seek an eleventh consecutive term in the House, Sharp joined Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was a Lecturer in Public Policy from 1995 to 2001. He served as Director of Harvard's Institute of Politics from 1995 to 1998 and again from 2004 until his appointment at RFF.

Terry Barker
Senior Research Associate, Cambridge University

Terry Barker is chairman of Cambridge Econometrics, the company formed by Cambridge University Department of Applied Economics researchers under his leadership to apply the Cambridge Multisectoral Dynamic Model of the British Economy. He is also a member of the editorial board of Economic Systems Research. His current research interests include systematic modeling of policies to achieve the U.K. 60 percent CO2 reduction target, ex post evaluation of the U.K. Climate Change Levy, the effects of global warming on energy demand, and real carbon prices and long-term economic growth.

Thomas E. Downing
Executive Director, Stockholm Environment Institute

Tom Downing established the Oxford office of the Stockholm Environment Institute in 2002, after more than 10 years with the Environmental Change Institute at Oxford University. He specializes in stakeholder participation and multi-agent social simulation and contributes to research on vulnerability and adaptation to climatic risks. Recent projects evaluated stakeholder and institutional capacity to adapt to changing climatic hazards, a vulnerability and adaptation training course, vulnerable food systems in India, and the use of seasonal climate forecasting to promote sustainable livelihoods in southern Africa.

Nick Eyre
Director of Strategy, Energy Saving Trust

Nick Eyre is with the Energy Saving Trust, established as part of the United Kingdom’s action plan response to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, which addressed worldwide concerns on sustainable development issues. Today, the Trust is the United Kingdom's leading organization working with a range of partners to deliver energy efficiency to domestic consumers. Its membership includes the Secretary of State for Environment, Transport and the Regions, the First Minister of the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and most of the United Kingdom's major energy companies.

Michael Grubb
Chief Economist, Carbon Trust

Michael Grubb is a leading international researcher on the economic dimensions of, and policy responses to, climate change and energy policy issues, including renewable energy sources. He has been a lead author of several Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports addressing the economic, technological, and social aspects of limiting greenhouse gas emissions. Grubb has also advised governments, companies, and international studies on climate change policy.

Franck Lecocq
French National Institute for Agricultural Research

Franck Lecocq has worked on many aspects of the economics of global environmental problems, including selection of mitigation paths, choice of instrument under uncertainty, post-Kyoto mitigation regimes, and project-based mechanisms. He also advises the World Bank’s Carbon Finance Business operations.

Gilbert E. Metcalf
Professor of Economics, Tufts University

Gilbert Metcalf recently served as the chair of the presidential task force on the Undergraduate Experience at Tufts University, and chairs Tufts’ Department of Economics. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, has taught at Princeton University and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and has served as a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His primary research area is applied public finance, with particular interests in taxation and investment, tax incidence, energy, and environmental economics.

W. David Montgomery
Vice President, Charles River Associates

David Montgomery is vice president of Charles River Associates (CRA) and co-heads CRA’s Energy and Environment Practice. He is an internationally recognized authority on economic issues in climate change policy and one of the first contributors to the literature on emissions trading. Montgomery directs the group at CRA that developed a set of widely respected economic models for the analysis of international, national, and industry impacts of proposed climate change policies.

Karsten  Neuhoff 
Senior Research Associate, Cambridge University

Karsten Neuhoff has acted as one of the principal investigators in the Sustainable Electricity Policy Research Project for Cambridge University since 2003 and has taught classes in Microeconomics and Industrial Organization at Cambridge over the last two years. He has authored numerous publications and presentations and has been active in policy, contract, and market analysis of the natural gas, oil, and electricity industries in the United States, the European Union, and the United Kingdom since 2000. His research focuses on energy market design, regulatory/institutional framework, CO2 emissions, and technology research and development support mechanisms.

Jonathan Pershing
Director of the Climate, Energy and Pollution Program, World Resources Institute

Jonathan Pershing is active in work on domestic and international climate and energy policy, including emissions trading, energy technology, and the evolving architecture of international climate agreements. He is involved in projects with individual states and the U.S. federal government on climate change and energy policy, as well as with governments from OECD, G8, and major developing nations. He was a U.S. negotiator for the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Pershing has written and lectured extensively on issues related to climate change, international negotiations, and environmental policy. 

William Pizer
Fellow, Resources for the Future

Billy Pizer is widely recognized for his research into the design of policies to address climate change risks caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases. His work assesses how various features of environmental policy in an economic context can influence a policy’s efficacy under different circumstances, including uncertainty, technical advances, and changing costs of environmental regulation. In addition to his work at RFF, he is a senior economist at the National Commission on Energy Policy, where he provides analysis and policy options on environmental and energy security issues. He also has served as a senior staff economist at the Council of Economic Advisers in 2001–2002, where he worked on energy, environment, and climate change issues.

John Reilly
Associate Director for Research, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

John Reilly is the associate director for research in the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change at MIT. Much of his 20-year research career has focused on the economics of climate change, including modeling of energy use and carbon emissions and on the economic impacts of climate change on agriculture, as well as consideration of agriculture and forestry sinks.

Richard Rosenzweig
Chief Operating Officer, Natsource

Richard Rosenzweig provides services to private firms, investment funds, governments, and international financial institutions on all aspects of climate change and renewable energy, including risk assessment and management, market entry strategies, trading system design, domestic policy development, and international negotiations. He has extensive experience in all aspects of emissions trading and risk management and has written extensively on the greenhouse gas market, the impacts of trading system design, and the role of technology in addressing climate change.

Joel Smith
Vice President, Stratus Consulting

Joel Smith has examined climate change impacts and adaptation issues for the U.S. Country Studies Program, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. Agency for International Development, the Office of Technology Assessment, the Electric Power Research Institute, the World Bank, the Global Environment Facility, the United Nations Environment Programme, and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis. He has provided technical advice, guidance, and training on assessing climate change impacts and adaptation to people around the world.

David Victor
Director, Energy and Sustainable Development Program, Stanford University