Faculty Spotlight

Shama Gamkhar, Associate Professor, Co-Authors Two Peer-Reviewed Articles on Energy Production and Health Benefits of Renewable Energy Sources

Ian Partridge, LBJ School PhD student and Associate Professor Shama Gamkhar, co-authored two articles "The role of offsets in a post-Kyoto climate agreement: The power sector in China," (Energy Policy, 2010) and “A methodology for estimating health benefits of electricity generation using renewable technologies,” (Environment International 2012). In the first article, the authors examine the incremental cost to the Chinese economy of reducing carbon dioxide emissions by replacing electricity from a coal-fired power station with energy from renewables. They propose an approach to project assessment that could incentivize the electricity generating sector to cut emissions while avoiding some of the problems encountered by the Clean Development Mechanism, an offset scheme created by Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol. The second article estimates the health benefits due to the reduction in pollution when coal is replaced by renewables.