Among the biggest fossil fuel guzzlers and polluters posing challenges to environmental sustainability is the transportation industry. In this university podcast, Christopher Knittel, an associate economics professor at UC Davis, notes that the government has done little to incentivize reductions in oil use or carbon emissions from this sector. Increases in fuel efficiency, lower-carbon fuels, and reductions in vehicle miles travelled are all ways in which pollution could be reduced in this arena, he says. Knittel pushes for subsidies and performance standards in the transportation industry as a means of reaching emissions goals. Knittel was talking at the 2010 Climate Policy Instruments in the Real World conference, an event convened by the Program on Energy and Sustainable Development (PESD) at Stanford University.
Christopher Knittel is an associate professor at UC Davis. In 2008, he was one of five faculty members at UC Davis named as a Chancellor's Fellow. His research focuses on industrial organization, environmental economics, and applied econometrics. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Productivity, Industrial Organization and Energy and Environmental Economics groups, a visiting Research Associate at the University of California Energy Institute and a faculty associate of the Institute of Transportation at UC Davis. Knittel received a PhD in Economics from UC Berkeley, an MA in economics from UC Davis, and a BA in economics and political science from California State University, Stanislaus.
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This free podcast is from our Stanford Discussions series.
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Photo: UC Davis