University of Wisconsin-Madison Assistant Professor of Public Affairs Morgan Edwards will present for the Seminar Series.
About Morgan Edwards
Morgan Edwards is an Assistant Professor of Public Affairs. Her research and teaching focus on human-centered energy responses to the climate crisis across policymaking scales. She draws on mixed quantitative and qualitative methods, combining large datasets and community knowledge with systems modeling, to assess and track the multi-dimensional impacts of human energy use. Current projects focus on fixing leaks in natural gas distribution systems, accelerating the phase-out of coal power plants, and assessing the equity implications of large-scale use of negative emissions technologies.
Professor Edwards received her Ph.D. in Engineering Systems from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), her S.M. in Technology and Policy from MIT, and her B.S. in Environmental Science and Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Before coming to Madison, she was a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Global Sustainability at the University of Maryland.
About the presentation
Electrifying household energy use is a key lever for climate action in the U.S. and globally. While energy bills often decrease for households that electrify, electrification can shift the costs of natural gas service to a shrinking customer base, driving up bills for those who are left behind. In this talk, I introduce a framework to address the affordability risks of electrification transitions, integrating household bill data with utility finances and energy infrastructure models. Applying this framework first to Massachusetts and then nationwide, I show that targeted electrification incentives can reduce affordability risks for vulnerable households in the next decade. However, in the long term, a coordinated transition will be needed to reduce the costs of energy services by strategically decommissioning the natural gas network at the neighborhood scale.
Please note that this event may be photographed. Images and other content may be published on Flickr and/or used to promote the La Follette School of Public Affairs in the future.
Organizer
La Follette School of Public Affairs,
Contact
Mindy Walker, mindy.walker@wisc.edu
