Abstract: Decarbonizing the electric power sector will require large investments lasting decades. At the same time, intensifying climate change will increasingly impact electric power systems. In this talk, Michael will survey his past, present, and future research examining how to adapt decarbonizing power systems to climate change. He will particularly focus on two recent papers that use optimization and simulation models to quantify U.S. power system costs and reliability under long-term weather variability. The first paper demonstrates significant climate-induced trade-offs between investments and operations in the Southeast U.S. power system. The second paper demonstrates a subset of large-scale meteorological patterns drive periods with risk of outages in the Western U.S. power system.
Bio: Michael is an Assistant Professor of Energy Systems at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability and the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering, and PI of the ASSET Lab. He researches how to equitably reduce global and local environmental impacts of energy systems while making those systems robust to future climate change. His research advances energy system models to address new challenges driven by decarbonization, climate adaptation, and equity objectives. He then applies these models to real-world systems to generate decision-relevant insights that account for engineering, economic, climatic, and policy features. Michael has received funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, U.S. National Science Foundation, and other organizations. He received his PhD in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University (’17), MS in Technology and Policy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (‘14), and BA in Environmental Studies from Washington University in St. Louis (’10)