Title

Is COVID-19 accelerating the energy transition by hastening the shift of investor capital? 

Time

1:40pm - 3:00pm

Location

Remote instruction

Abstract

The first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic eliminated transportation oil demand virtually overnight, creating severe price volatility in commodity markets and bring climate risk front of mind to energy investors. Energy companies now represent less than 3% of the S&P 500, down from 13% in 2008. ExxonMobil’s decline is so large, it is no longer included in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. NextEra Energy Inc. the world’s largest provider of wind and solar energy is now more valuable than ExxonMobil, in a trend to a shift to clean energy stocks that appears to be gaining momentum. Amy Myers Jaffe will talk about how investor responses and shareholder activism related to climate change is impacting energy company strategies, potentially accelerating the energy transition. New policies from the incoming Biden administration might hasten this trend. The seminar will cover modeling uncertainty about oil demand and climate risk and new climate and energy policy choices that will be considered in the United States.

Biographical Sketch

Amy Myers Jaffe is managing director of the Climate Policy Lab and a research professor at The Fletcher School at Tufts University. She also serves as co-chair of the steering committee of the Women in Energy Initiative at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. A leading expert on global energy policy and sustainability, Jaffe has previously served as the David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment at the Council on Foreign Relations and Executive Director for energy and sustainability at the University of California, Davis, where she conducted research on low or zero carbon fuels and transportation policy. Jaffe also previously served as senior advisor for sustainability at the Office of the Chief Investment Officer at the University of California, Regents, assisting with the design and launch of their sustainable investing strategy. Jaffe has taught international energy policy, business, and sustainability courses at Rice University, University of California, Davis, Yale University, and Tufts University.

Jaffe is widely published, including as co-author of Oil, Dollars, Debt and Crises: The Global Curse of Black Gold, with Dr. Mahmoud El-Gamal. Her forthcoming book Energy’s Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security will be published by Columbia University Press in 2021. A frequent media commentator, Jaffe is president of the US Association for Energy Economics and holds a Senior Fellow award from that organization for her career contributions to the field of energy economics. She is a member of the Global Future Council on Net Zero Transition at the World Economic Forum (Davos).