r/IAmA • u/HarrisPublicPolicy • 3h ago
I’m an energy economist who used to work in the oil industry. I study what climate policy actually does to energy prices, oil production, and emissions — AMA.
Hi Reddit! I’m Ryan Kellogg, an energy and environmental economist at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. Proof.
I’m the Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor at Harris, our Deputy Dean for Academic Programs, and the Faculty Director of Harris’s MS in Climate and Energy Policy. Before joining Harris, I spent four years working for BP in Houston and Alaska as an engineer and economic analyst. Today, my research focuses on energy markets, the behavior of oil and gas producers, and what actually happens when governments try to reduce carbon emissions
Energy policy involves some difficult trade-offs. Affordable and reliable energy has enormous economic value, particularly in developing countries, while our historical reliance on fossil fuels creates substantial environmental and climate costs. Much of my work asks how we can reduce those costs while taking seriously the way consumers, companies, and global energy markets actually respond to policies.
Sometimes those responses are surprising. My research has found that blocking an oil pipeline may shift most of the oil onto trains rather than leave it underground, potentially increasing local air pollution. I’ve studied how the Jones Act (the century-old law governing shipping between U.S. ports) raises petroleum costs. And my work on the eventual “end of oil” suggests that when producers expect oil demand to decline in the future, they may invest and produce less today rather than rush to pump everything they can.
Carbon taxes and cap-and-trade have long been favored by economists, but clean-energy standards and subsidies can have important advantages too. I’ve argued that effective climate policy will probably require a portfolio of approaches taken together. Because carbon emissions are global, policies also need to account for what happens outside the country that adopts them.
Ask me anything about oil and gas, climate change, carbon taxes, clean-energy subsidies, pipelines, electric vehicles, energy prices, why the U.S. still uses so much fossil fuel, whether the world is really approaching “the end of oil,” Venezuela and global oil markets, or how economists think about the winners, losers, and unintended consequences of climate policy. (Or about the new climate and energy policy degree I run!)
I’ll be responding here at 12:45 CT, along with support from the Harris School of Public Policy team account, which is helping me track and manage incoming questions.
