Director: Dr. Marilyn Brown  Deputy Director: Dr. Paul Baer

The Environment and Energy Policy concentration at Georgia Tech's School of Public Policy positions graduates for leadership careers that address sustainable energy challenges in various areas of professional life, including government agencies, universities, not-for-profits, and industry. The Climate and Energy Policy (CEP) Lab supports this effort by conducting research on global energy security, green jobs and clean energy employment, policies to promote energy-efficiency investments in the residential, commercial, and industrial sectors, renewable energy policies and trends in the U.S. South, smart grid policies, and demand response. We are involved in studies of climate mitigation under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and our policy interests span the triad of mitigation, adaptation, and geoengineering.

The CEP Lab analyzes climate change and energy policies using software tools including
the National Energy Modeling System (NEMS), MARKAL models, hybrid NEMS-Input/
Output approaches, and Monte Carlo methods to characterize uncertainties. These models are used
to evaluate the speed and market penetration of new and improved energy technologies and
the ability of possible future policies to accelerate technology adoption. NEMS, in particular,
characterizes thousands of supply- and demand-side energy technologies. Georgia Tech is among
a few institutions that can adapt and deploy these models to help inform the opportunities and
constraints surrounding technology and policy innovations.
 
Key sponsors and collaborators: The CEP Lab’s sponsors and collaborators include Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the U.S. Department of Energy, NSF, Duke University, the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority, and the Energy, Kresge, and Turner Foundations.