September 10, 2015 – FEEM Seminar on “Energy Transitions: Directed Technical Change Meets Directed Extraction”

Industrial economies have undergone multiple transitions in their dominant energy input. In this week’s seminar Derek Lemoine, University of Arizona, develops a setting in which specialized machines must be used to convert different types of resources into useful energy, and shows that regular transitions between dominant resources arise endogenously when innovation and extraction are both directed to the most profitable resource. He also formalizes a novel market transformation motive for the common policies that mandate use of renewable energy.