EPIC’s Executive Director Sam Ori will give an overview of EPIC, its student resources, and hopes surrounding the Club. Please bring your ideas for future Club activities and requests from EPIC.

For planning purposes, please register.

Join EPIC to eat, be social, and talk climate and energy! Lunch is on us.

For planning purposes, please register. 

In 1879, the year Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, about 1.2 billion people lived on the planet (The Maddison Project, 2013). Today, 141 years later, almost a billion people still do not use electricity as their primary source of lighting. There is a clear relationship between the national income of countries across the globe and their energy consumption. And yet developing country institutions have failed to achieve their goals, with hundreds of millions of people disconnected from the grid, and even more households forced to make do with intermittent and unreliable power. The problem only gets thornier because a host of environmental problems – air pollution and climate change included – accompany energy use and already threaten welfare in poor countries. Policymakers thus find themselves seemingly caught between conflicting imperatives – use more energy, keep prices low, and protect the environment at the same time. This talk discusses this energy and development challenge and the ways in which University of Chicago researchers are attempting to solve it.

Instead of our normal lunch break, the Club will be part of a larger campus-wide event hosting a seminar by David Keith on geoengineering.

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While in Congress, Carlos Curbelo led on climate policy, co-founding and co-chairing the bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus and introducing the landmark Market Choice Act—ambitious legislation that would invest nearly a trillion dollars in American infrastructure while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by pricing carbon. Curbelo can speak to Republicans’ views on climate change today, ways to bring bipartisan support for climate policies, and his own career path and advice for future climate leaders.

Join EPIC to eat, be social, and talk climate and energy! Lunch is on us.

The term “climate justice” acknowledges that climate change can have different social, economic, public health, and other adverse impacts on underprivileged populations. This is a challenge India confronts head on, often suffering the brunt of climate impacts. Addressing these inequities will take short- and long-term mitigation and adaptation strategies. In this Club lunch, Indian Member of Parliament Ritesh Pandey will give his take on the issue and solutions to confront it, while students may ask about Pandey’s experiences as a policymaker, how he got to where he is today, as well as his efforts to confront climate, energy and environment challenges in India more broadly.

Join EPIC to eat, be social, and talk climate and energy!

Join EPIC to eat, be social, and talk climate and energy!

Fiona Burling is an assistant professor at the Harris School of Public Policy and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She studies energy and environmental economics, with a focus on the developing world. Her ongoing research examines the impacts of rural electrification in India, the design of developing-country electricity markets, and groundwater management in California. Fiona holds a PhD and an MS in agricultural and resource economics from the University of California, Berkeley, and a BA in economics, political science, and German from Williams College.