Modeling the Supply of Offsets for Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Brian Murray
Dr. Murray is Director for Economic Analysis at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and Research Professor at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. He 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. 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 been a consultant to a wide range of clientele in the public and private sector, including numerous federal government agencies, members of Congress and their staff, state regulatory agencies, CEOs and senior staff from Fortune 500 companies, trade groups, nongovernmental organizations, and other academic institutions.   His work has been published extensively 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.

Ken Andrasko
Kenneth Andrasko is senior methodological specialist for World Bank's Carbon Finance Unit since November 2007, developing the Bank's Forest Carbon Partnership Facility to address REDD and methods on REDD, and with BioCarbon Fund.  Previously, Ken worked at U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Change Division in Washington, DC, on the Administration's Kyoto negotiating team on land use issues 1999-2001; on land use and offset project issues and Former Soviet Union region for U.S. Initiative on Joint Implementation and U.S Country Studies Program, 1995-98; and has authored or edited journal special issues, EPA and other reports, and technical papers for EPA, UNFAO, and journals on climate change, forestry, and joint implementation.  He was a lead author for five UN IPCC reports on climate change, including the AR4 WGIII Forestry mitigation chapter.

Brent Sohngen
Brent Sohngen is Professor of environmental and resource economics in the Department of Agricultural, Environmental and Development Economics at the Ohio State University. He received his Ph.D. in environmental economics from Yale University in 1996. Sohngen conducts research on the economics of land use change, the design of incentive mechanisms for water and carbon trading, carbon sequestration, and non-market valuation of environmental resources. Professor Sohngen developed a global timber and land use model that has been widely used to assess the implications of climate change on forested ecosystems and forest product markets and to assess the costs of carbon sequestration in forests, including reductions in deforestation. The model has recently been expanded to account for agricultural production and markets. Professor Sohngen has written or co-written 31 peer-reviewed journal articles, 45 monographs and book chapters. He has been published in a variety of journals including the American Economic Review, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Ecological Economics, and Climatic Change. He co-edited a special issue of Climatic Change in 2006, addressing adaptation to climate change.

Ruben Lubowski
Dr. Ruben N. Lubowski is a Senior Economist at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF).  He focuses on strategies for integrating carbon emissions and sinks from forestry and agriculture into US and international climate policies.    In particular, he leads economic analyses of the potential for integrating Reductions in Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) as part of emerging carbon markets.   From 2002 through 2007, Dr. Lubowski was an Economist at the Resource and Rural Economics Division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service (USDA-ERS).  He was the agency’s Subject Specialist on Land Use and specialized on the measurement and modeling of land-use changes and their environmental impacts.    He was previously a Research Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.  Dr. Lubowski has also worked on tropical forest management and other environmental and development issues at the World Bank, the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID), and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP).   He spent two years in Sri Lanka studying the economic value of tropical forests for local communities.   He received his Ph.D. and A.M. in Political Economy and Government from Harvard University and his A.B. from Harvard College.

Shaun Ragnauth
Shaun Ragnauth is an economist in EPA's Climate Change Division.  His work focuses on non-CO2 greenhouse gas mitigation cost analysis.  He is responsible for continued development of non-CO2 marginal abatement cost curve modeling and offset cost analysis.  Mr. Ragnauth has a B.S. in Environmental Science and an M.S. in Ecological Economics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.  Prior to joining EPA he worked for SRA International, Inc. as an environmental analyst providing analytic support to a variety of EPA program offices.

Paul Gunning
Mr. Gunning holds master degrees in environmental science and public administration and has over 15 years of experience in developing and implementing voluntary programs.  Working in both the public and private sectors Mr. Gunning has focused his efforts on environmental program development and implementation with a special emphasis on government/industry partnerships.  Mr. Gunning is currently the Chief of EPA’s Non-CO2 Programs Branch and is responsible for the implementation of all US voluntary programs that promote profitable opportunities for reducing emissions of methane and high-global warming potential gases.  The branch is also responsible for the implementation of the Administration’s Methane to Markets Partnership.  This international Partnership will reduce global methane emissions to enhance economic growth, promote energy security, improve the environment, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.    

Kevin Townsend
Kevin Townsend is a Vice President of Portfolio Development at Blue Source, LLC.  Blue Source has been in the business of developing voluntary greenhouse gas reduction projects and marketing offsets from such into the North American voluntary and pre-compliance markets since 2000.  More recently, the company has begun investing capital into such projects through its $1 Billion equity investment fund.  Blue Source’s offset portfolio is the largest in North America, with nearly 200 million tonnes sourced from 25 different project types in all of the lower 48 states as well as Canada.  Kevin focuses most of his efforts in the areas of industrial gases, wastewater treatment and manure management.  Prior to Blue Source, Kevin was a Product Manager for Parker Hannifin Corp. in the construction, mining and forestry sectors.

John M. Antle
John M. Antle is a professor in the Department of Agricultural Economics and Economics at Montana State University. He received the Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 1980.  During 1989 90 he served as a senior staff economist for the President's Council of Economic Advisers in Washington, D.C. He served as a member of the National Research Council's Board on Agriculture (1991 97), and a member of the NRC's Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change (1998-99); and was a lead author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment reports published in 2001 and 2007. He is a past President and Distinguished Fellow of the American Agricultural Economics Association, and a University Fellow at Resources for the Future. His current research focuses on the sustainability of agricultural systems in industrialized and developing countries, terrestrial and geologic greenhouse gas mitigation, and impacts of climate change in agriculture.

Steve Rose
Steven Rose is a senior research economist at EPRI. His research focuses on the economics of land-use and bioenergy as it relates to domestic and international climate change policy, and on long-run modeling of climate change drivers, mitigation, and potential risks. Current research focuses on improving the modeling of the opportunity costs of land and land-based mitigation in order to better estimate the cost of land-based greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation, the supplies of bioenergy feedstocks, and the carbon cycle implications. Before joining EPRI in October 2008, Steve served as a senior research economist on climate change at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where he was a senior technical advisor to domestic policy-making and international negotiations and actively engaged in research as well as scientific assessments. He was a lead author for the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report on the topic of land-use emissions and mitigation. In addition, Steve chairs the land modeling subgroup of Stanford University’s Energy Modeling Forum (EMF).

Adam Diagneault
Adam Daigneault is an Economist in the EPA’s Climate Change Division. His research focuses on economic modeling of the U.S. and international agriculture, forestry, and land-use sectors.  Dr. Daigneault has recently contributed to EPA’s economic analysis of the Waxman-Markey Discussion Draft and to the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking of the revised Renewable Fuels Standard program (RFS2).  He has a Ph.D. in Environmental and Resource Economics from The Ohio State University and a B.A. in Economics and Environmental Studies from Denison University in Granville, Ohio.