rich sweeney

📢Call for Papers: Northeast Workshop on Energy Policy and Environmental Economics May 8-9, 2026 at Boston College Submissions due Friday March 6th Additional info and submission details available here: richard-sweeney.com/ne-workshop/

Reminder: Submissions for the Northeast Workshop on Energy Policy and Environmental Economics are due this Friday.

The Sloan Foundation is pleased to announce an open call for letters of inquiry to support interdisciplinary energy system research by early career-faculty! 📌Submission deadline: Tuesday, March 17, 2026 More details: sloan.org/programs/resea…

Are you a PhD student interested in the economics of innovation? The Economics of Ideas, Science, and Innovation Online short course, hosted by @IFP, is back for the third time! ifp.org/economics-of-i…

With today's news, worth re-upping this footnote from the Aghion, Howitt, et al "inverted-U" paper. (Click to the replies to see Nick Bloom defend this head-scratching sample selection criteria 😂)

Some great research topics for energy economists in these threads by @AriPeskoe and @TKavulla

@knowledgeprob @jmhorp @MichaelGiberso3 This paper estimates the fraction of mispricing corrected by TOU, CPP and real time pricing: arthurvanbenthem.com/docs/DynamicEl…

@jmhorp @MichaelGiberso3 Much "easier" than dynamic pricing if you don't have automation technologies. But they now surround us. And TOU is a coarse and crude mechanism for organic adaptation to changing conditions, which is what prices exist to do.

Dynamic pricing of electricity, where rates change multiple times per day, is efficient but probably too confusing for many consumers. But Missouri offers an intermediate version: the option to have peak and off-peak prices Here's one example from Ameren, largest provider in MO

📢Call for papers! 🔌We are announcing MWEET: an economics of energy transition workshop in Manchester on Dec 11-12! 🗨️Keynotes: Shanjun Li + Michael Pollitt 📎Please submit your abstract at forms.gle/ZRQdnmPdJ9PDz9… by 1 Aug 💡More info: tinyurl.com/4e3w8rph Pls retweet :)

would love to see some ideas on how to incentivize utilities to do this on their own, rather than relying on the (impressive!) efforts of hyper motivated and highly educated local activists

nice piece on my town's efforts to get off natural gas. utilities have historically been tasked with identifying and updating aging parts of the pipeline network. rather than rubber stamping these requests, this is a good time to ask if these neighborhoods could fully electrify.

This paper was quite a journey with my excellent coauthor, @ALashkaripour I’m proud that it found the best home I could imagine. Here is a summary 🧵

green tax credits are much more confusing and uncertain for consumers than direct subsidies

Interesting IO + EEE topic: "The demand response resources don’t have to bid into the capacity market, which would allow NRG to withhold them from the market to drive up capacity prices to the benefit of its power plants, according to the market monitor."

talk about real world impact! this paper finds that the announcement of peter cramton's visit to colombia caused an electricity cartel to collapse dropbox.com/scl/fi/rs3ju8s…

@VictoriaMarone_ Congrats Victoria!

Excited to announce that I will be joining the Economics Department at Yale this upcoming fall! Incredibly sad to leave Austin and my wonderful colleagues at UT, but excited for what's ahead. In related news: come work with @codyfcook and I as a Tobin Pre-Doc! Posting linked ⬇️

Excited to be participating in the 7th Annual NBER Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy Conference tomorrow. I’ll be presenting research on how we can improve the siting of renewable energy projects to better support the grid. Stream here 👇 nber.org/conferences/7t…

I am hiring 3 RAs to help build out a data set on state DOT infrastructure costs. Description attached. If you are interested in infrastructure and getting into the weeds with data please apply here: aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF04891.

🚨PhD alert! In light of everything happening in the world, the Econ Department at @ImperialBiz is conducting a second lightning round of admissions for fall 2025! Applications due April 30, offers in mid-May. Please spread the word! More details: dropbox.com/scl/fi/55wkl2q…

For PhD students and scholars interested in joining: I will take part in teaching International Trade and the Environment at #PSESummerSchool (June 9-12). parisschoolofeconomics.eu/en/summer-scho… Below is a description (1/7)

New working paper: Could AI leapfrog the web? Only 37% of sub-Saharan Africans use the internet. Cost is the #1 constraint. In a study with 469 teachers in Sierra Leone, we find AI works better than the web--and is 87% cheaper. arxiv.org/abs/2502.12397 Let's dive in... 🧵(1/X)