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Effects of U.S. Tax Policy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions (2013)

Chapter: Appendix B: Biographical Information of Committee and Staff

« Previous: Appendix A: Modeling Approaches to the Effects of Tax Policy on GHG Emissions
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Information of Committee and Staff." National Research Council. 2013. Effects of U.S. Tax Policy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18299.
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Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Information of Committee and Staff." National Research Council. 2013. Effects of U.S. Tax Policy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18299.
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Page 176
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Information of Committee and Staff." National Research Council. 2013. Effects of U.S. Tax Policy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18299.
×
Page 177
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Information of Committee and Staff." National Research Council. 2013. Effects of U.S. Tax Policy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18299.
×
Page 178
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Information of Committee and Staff." National Research Council. 2013. Effects of U.S. Tax Policy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18299.
×
Page 179
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Information of Committee and Staff." National Research Council. 2013. Effects of U.S. Tax Policy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18299.
×
Page 180
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Information of Committee and Staff." National Research Council. 2013. Effects of U.S. Tax Policy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18299.
×
Page 181
Suggested Citation:"Appendix B: Biographical Information of Committee and Staff." National Research Council. 2013. Effects of U.S. Tax Policy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/18299.
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Page 182

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Appendix B Biographical Information of Committee and Staff WILLIAM D. NORDHAUS is Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale Uni- versity, New Haven, Connecticut, USA. He received a B. A. from Yale Univer- sity in 1963 and a Ph.D. in Economics in 1967 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Nordhaus is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Philo- sophical Society. He is on the research staff of the National Bureau of Economic Research and the Cowles Foundation for Research. From 1977 to 1979, he was a Member of the President's Council of Economic Advisers. From 1986 to 1988, he served as the Provost of Yale University. Professor Nordhaus is current or past associate editor of several scientific journals. He was elected President of the American Economic Association to serve in 2014-2015. He has served on several committees of the National Academy of Sciences on topics including climate change, environmental accounting, and the macroeco- nomic effects of aging. He is the author of many books and scholarly publica- tions. His books include Is Growth Obsolete? (with James Tobin), The Efficient Use of Energy Resources, Reforming Federal Regulation, Managing the Global Commons, and (joint with Paul Samuelson) the classic textbook, Economics, now in its nineteenth edition. He is author of a book on the economics of global warming, The Climate Casino, to be published by Yale Press in 2013. MAUREEN L. CROPPER is professor of economics at the University of Mar- yland, former lead economist at The World Bank, and research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Dr. Cropper’s research has focused on valuing environmental amenities (especially environmental health effects), on the discounting of future health benefits, and on the tradeoffs implicit in envi- ronmental regulations. Her recent research analyzes the externalities associated 175

176 Effects of U.S. Tax Policy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions with motorization and the interaction between residential location, land use and travel demand. Dr. Cropper is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She also is past president of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and a former chair of the Advisory Council for Clean Air Act Com- pliance Analysis, a subcommittee of Environmental Protection Agency's Science Advisory Board. Dr. Cropper has served on the advisory boards of Resources for the Future, the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, the Donald Bren School of the Environment and the AEI-Brookings Center on Regulation. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University. FRANCISCO DE LA CHESNAYE is a Program Manager and Senior Econo- mist at the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). He manages the institute’s program on Global Climate Policy Costs and Benefits and also manages the application of a new U.S. energy-economic model used to assess the impact of climate and energy policies on the electric power sector, the energy system, and the economy at both regional and national scales. In addition to his work at EPRI, Mr. de la Chesnaye serves on various external expert panels. He is a Lead Author on the current U.S. Climate Assessment’s Mitigation chapter. In 2010, Mr. de la Chesnaye served on a previous Academies Panel which com- pleted a report to Congress titled “Limiting the Magnitude of Future Climate Change.” Prior to joining EPRI in 2008, Mr. de la Chesnaye was the Chief Cli- mate Economist at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency where he was responsible for developing and applying the agency’s economic models for do- mestic and international climate change policy analysis for the Administration and Congress. Mr. de la Chesnaye was a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fourth Assessment Report and was a co-editor of Human-Induced Climate Change: An Interdisciplinary Assessment published by Cambridge Univ. Press (2007). Mr. de la Chesnaye is a Ph.D. candidate at the Univ. of Maryland’s School of Public Policy. He holds graduate degrees from Johns Hopkins and American University and a B.S. from Norwich Univ., The Military College of Vermont. NOAH DIFFENBAUGH is an Assistant Professor in the School of Earth Sci- ences and Center Fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. His research interests are centered on the dynamics and impacts of climate variability and change, including the role of humans as a coupled com- ponent of the climate system. Much of his work has focused on the role of fine- scale processes in shaping climate change impacts, including studies of extreme weather, water resources, agriculture, human health, and poverty vulnerability. Dr. Diffenbaugh is currently a Lead Author for Working Group II of the Inter- governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He also serves on the Executive Committee of the Atmospheric Sciences Section of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), as an Editor of Geophysical Research Letters, and as a Member Representative to the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR). Dr. Diffenbaugh is a recipient of the James R. Holton Award from the

Appendix B 177 American Geophysical Union, a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation, and a Terman Fellowship from Stanford University. He has also been recognized a Kavli Fellow by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, and as a Google Science Communication Fellow. Before coming to Stanford, he was a member of the faculty of Purdue University, where he was a University Facul- ty Scholar and served as Interim Director of the Purdue Climate Change Re- search Center (PCCRC). DAVID G. HAWKINS is Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) Climate Programs, which focus on advancing policies and programs to reduce pollution responsible for global warming and harmful climate change. He has also been director of the NRDC Air and Energy Program and was co- director of the NRDC Clean Air Program. He initiated the NRDC Clean Air Project in 1971, which has influenced the federal Clean Air Act since the law's passage. He served as Assistant Administrator for Air, Noise, and Radiation at EPA from 1977 to 1981. He served as a member of the National Research Council Board on Energy and Environmental Systems and committees to Re- view the Structure and Performance of the Health Effects Institute and to study the Energy Futures and Air Pollution in Urban China and the United States. Mr. Hawkins has extensive public policy and regulatory experience related to air quality, climate change, and related energy supply and demand issues. ROBERTA MANN is the Frank Nash Professor of Law at the University of Oregon School of Law. A recognized tax law expert, she has written extensively on how tax policy affects the environment. Professor Mann earned her B.S., M.B.A. and J.D., cum laude, from Arizona State University, where she also served as assistant editor of the Arizona State University Law Journal. In 1995, she received her LL.M. in taxation, with distinction, from Georgetown Universi- ty Law Center. Prior to entering academia, Professor Mann practiced in the Of- fice of Chief Counsel of the Internal Revenue Service, concentrating primarily on the areas of partnerships, corporate, and natural resources. She also served on the Staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation in U.S. Congress. BRIAN MURRAY is director of economic analysis at Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions. Dr. Murray is widely recognized for his work on the economics of climate change policy, including the design of cap-and- trade policy elements to address cost containment and inclusion of offsets from traditionally uncapped sectors such as forestry and agriculture. His work has also focused on the broader economic and environmental implications of poli- cies to expand biofuel use. He routinely advises members of the United States Congress and their staff on climate change legislative proposals. Dr. Murray has been invited as a co-author of several national and international assessments of forest resources, especially related to climate change. Of particular note, he was a convening lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Special Report on Land Use, Land Use Change, and Forestry. He has convened

178 Effects of U.S. Tax Policy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions several forums of economic modeling experts to examine and communicate the results of their climate, energy and land use policy efforts to the public and pri- vate sectors. His research has examined the economic effects of traditional command-based regulatory strategies for pollution control and more market- oriented approaches such as cap-and-trade programs and emission taxes. His work has been published in books, edited volumes, and professional journals. Prior to coming to the Nicholas Institute in 2006, Dr. Murray was Director of the Center for Regulatory Economics and Policy Research at RTI International, a university-affiliated not-for-profit research institution. JOHN M. REILLY is Co-Director of MIT's Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and a Senior Lecturer in the Sloan School. He is an energy, environmental, and agricultural economist who focuses on understand- ing the role of human activities as a contributor to global environmental change and the effects of environmental change on society and the economy. A key element of his work is the integration of economic models of the global econo- my as it represents human activity with models of biophysical systems including the ocean, atmosphere, and terrestrial vegetation. By understanding the complex interactions of human society with our planet, the goal is to aid in the design of policies that can effectively limit the contribution of human activity to environ- mental change, to facilitate adaptation to unavoidable change, and to understand the consequences of the deployment of large scale energy systems that will be needed to meet growing energy needs. DREW SHINDELL is a senior scientist at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Dr. Shindell researches climate change, with a focus on atmospheric chemistry. An expert on modeling the impact of emissions changes, Dr. Shindell’s work has investigated how the atmospheric chemical system has important effects on humans through pollu- tants such as smog or particulates, through acid rain, and through stratospheric ozone change, and how climate can be altered by greenhouse gases, solar varia- bility, volcanic eruptions, aerosols, and ozone, and what impacts changes in cli- mate and air quality may have on society. Dr. Shindell serves as a coordinating lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Fifth Assess- ment Report on global climate change. He earned his Ph.D. at Stony Brook Uni- versity. ERIC TODER is an Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute and co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. Dr. Toder’s recent work includes pa- pers on using a carbon tax to pay for corporate rate cuts, cutting tax preferences to pay for lower tax rates, tax expenditures and the size of government, tax poli- cy and international competitiveness, value added taxes, the home mortgage interest deduction, trends in tax expenditures, the distributional effects of tax expenditures, corporate tax reform, charitable tax incentives, taxation of saving, the tax gap, effects on retirement income of changes in pension coverage and

Appendix B 179 stock prices, employing older workers, and energy tax incentives. Dr. Toder previously held a number of positions in tax policy offices in the U.S. govern- ment and overseas, including service as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department, Director of Research at the Internal Revenue Service, Deputy Assistant Director for Tax Analysis at the Congres- sional Budget Office, and consultant to the New Zealand Treasury. He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Rochester in 1971. ROBERTON C. WILLIAMS, III studies both environmental policy and tax policy, with a particular focus on interactions between the two. He is an associ- ate professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, senior fellow and director of academic affairs at Resources for the Future, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He also serves as a co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics, editorial council member (and former co- editor) of the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management and mem- ber of the editorial board of the B.E. Journal of Analysis & Policy. He was pre- viously an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin, a visiting research scholar at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and an Andrew W. Mellon fellow at the Brookings Institution. CATHERINE WOLFRAM is the Flood Foundation Professor of Business Administration at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. She also serves as co-director of the Energy Institute at Haas and is a member of the Haas School’s Economic Analysis & Policy Group. Professor Wolfram studies the economics of energy markets and has examined the impact of environmental regulation on energy markets and the effects of electricity in- dustry privatization and restructuring around the world. She earned her Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

180 Effects of U.S. Tax Policy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions STAFF STEPHEN A. MERRILL, project director, has been Executive Director of the National Academies’ Board on Science, Technology, and Economic Policy (STEP) since its formation in 1992. With the sponsorship of numerous federal government agencies, foundations, multinational corporations, and international institutions, the STEP program has become an important discussion forum and authoritative voice on innovation, competitiveness, intellectual property, human resources, statistical, and research and development policies. At the same time Dr. Merrill has directed many STEP projects and publications, including A Pa- tent System for the 21st Century (2004), Innovation Inducement Prizes (2007), and Innovation in Global Industries (2008). For his work on patent reform he was named one of the 50 most influential people worldwide in the intellectual property field by Managing Intellectual Property magazine and earned the Academies’ 2005 Distinguished Service Award. He has been a member of the World Economic Forum Global Council on the Intellectual Property System. Previously, Dr. Merrill was a Fellow in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), where he specialized in technology trade issues. He served on various congressional staffs including the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, where he organized the first congressional hearings on international competition in the semiconductor and biotechnology industries. Dr. Merrill holds degrees in political science from Columbia (B.A.), Oxford (M.Phil.), and Yale (M.A. and Ph.D.) Universities. He attended the Kennedy School of Government’s Senior Executives Program and was an adjunct professor of international affairs at Georgetown University from 1989 to 1996. PAUL BEATON first joined STEP in 2010 as a Mirzayan Science & Technol- ogy Policy Fellow and returned in 2011 as a Program Officer. He brings signifi- cant experience and expertise in entrepreneurship and innovation, and in science and technology policy, particularly in the areas of healthcare technology and energy and natural resources. At STEP he works on a spectrum of issues from tax and energy to immigration and intellectual property. Paul also serves on the advisory board of the African Institute for Health Policy and as an independent advisor to a healthcare IT company. Prior to joining STEP, Paul earned a combined J.D. and Master of Environmen- tal Management from the Yale Law School and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, where he received the Benjamin F. Stapleton, Jr. Schol- arship, a Dean’s Scholarship, and a Sonnenschein Scholarship. At Yale he fo- cused primarily on energy and climate change law and policy, authoring re- search on the climate effects of U.S. agriculture policy and an analysis of policy and structure at the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Paul also worked with a negotiating team and heads of state at United Nations’ climate change treaty negotiations, and has counseled on Latin American na-

Appendix B 181 tions on environmental legislation. He also served on the executive board of The Yale Journal on Regulation and as an executive officer of the Yale Environmen- tal Law Association. Paul earned his B.Sc. (summa cum laude) from UNC-Asheville where he re- ceived a congressionally awarded Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship, the William and Ida Friday Award, and was elected to Omicron Delta Kappa. Paul also re- ceived the University Fellows Grant, which along with a NSF grant and his Goldwater Scholarship, supported his research on the impacts of industrial sub- stances that have replaced ozone-depleting chemicals since the enactment of the Montreal Protocol. Following his undergraduate work, Paul worked as a special guest research chemist for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) before returning to North Carolina to co-establish the state’s first biofu- els production facility. AQILA COULTHURST has been Program Coordinator for STEP since the fall of 2011. Prior to joining STEP, she spent over two years in the production and marketing divisions of the National Academies Press (NAP), the arm of the Na- tional Academies that publishes over 200 reports annually. Ms. Coulthurst was involved in several initiatives at NAP including: direct marketing and online outreach; facilitating the sale of intellectual property rights to publishers abroad, and general operational support. Her accomplishments include designing and deploying 100+ emails to over 150,000 subscribers, writing copy for the online catalog and other marketing materials, compiling and analyzing performance metrics to better understand consumer behavior, and developing relationships with agents/publishers in the Asian market resulting in over $40K in intellectual property sales. Over the years, Ms. Coulthurst has worked in various capacities at Smithsonian Enterprises, the National Community Action Foundation, Kingsley Associates and the Center for Science, Technology and Economic Development at SRI In- ternational. She has extensive experience conducting impact assessments and program evaluations. In addition to her interest in U.S. competitiveness and in- novation policies, Ms. Coulthurst is interested in how these policies impact de- velopment abroad. She spent several years studying U.S. foreign policy and sustainable development at renowned institutions in DC, and while studying abroad in Central America. She has a B.A. in economics and in Spanish, and a certificate in markets and management from Duke University. She also has a Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.

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The U.S. Congress charged the National Academies with conducting a review of the Internal Revenue Code to identify the types of and specific tax provisions that have the largest effects on carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions and to estimate the magnitude of those effects. To address such a broad charge, the National Academies appointed a committee composed of experts in tax policy, energy and environmental modeling, economics, environmental law, climate science, and related areas.

For scientific background to produce Effects of U.S. Tax Policy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions, the committee relied on the earlier findings and studies by the National Academies, the U.S. government, and other research organizations. The committee has relied on earlier reports and studies to set the boundaries of the economic, environmental, and regulatory assumptions for the present study. The major economic and environmental assumptions are those developed by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) in its annual reports and modeling. Additionally, the committee has relied upon publicly available data provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which inventories greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from different sources in the United States.
The tax system affects emissions primarily through changes in the prices of inputs and outputs or goods and services. Most of the tax provisions considered in this report relate directly to the production or consumption of different energy sources. However, there is a substantial set of tax expenditures called "broad-based" that favor certain categories of consumption—among them, employer-provided health care, owner-occupied housing, and purchase of new plants and equipment. Effects of U.S. Tax Policy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions examines both tax expenditures and excise taxes that could have a significant impact on GHG emissions.
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