Bio: Mik Carbajales-Dale heads the E3SA group. He joined Clemson University in August 2014 as an Assistant Professor in the Environmental Engineering & Earth Sciences department. Before joining Clemson, Mik was an Energy Systems Analyst with Stanford’s Environmental Assessment & Optimization Lab and with the Global Climate & Energy Project (GCEP). His research focuses on the long-term, large-scale evolution and dynamics of the energy-economy system, especially how development of energy resources affects social development and the effects of a future transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy technologies.
Prior to this Mik undertook his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering with the Advanced Energy and Material Systems (AEMS) Laboratory at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand. His doctoral thesis was Global Energy Modelling - A Biophysical Approach (GEMBA), which married net energy analysis with systems dynamic modelling to study the interaction of the global economy with the energy sector. Mik also carried out a number of community-based energy-related projects whilst in New Zealand, being especially involved with Transition initiatives: local groups seeking innovative ways to address the twin challenges of Peak Oil and Climate Change.
You can read Mik's CV here. You can contact Mik here.
Abstract: The objective of this project is to develop a model to test the hypothesis that, “interacting agents are able to collectively manage a resource transition from non-renewable energy resources (e.g. fossil fuels) to renewable energy systems”. Many current energy-economy models do not fully assess resource scarcity because they fail to account for resource requirements in physical units. The only marker of scarcity is an increasing financial cost, but this cost is a function of multiple parameters (including physical scarcity) that are underdeveloped in the models. The models also do not adequately represent interdependent decisions by autonomous firms and individuals, or the interdependencies between the biosphere and economy. The first weakness implies that significant feedback loops are left unaccounted– a single “representative” firm will, by definition, underrepresent significant outliers that affect the system. The second weakness has two issues: the energy-economy link and the environment-economy link. Within most models, economic growth is not a function of energy supply or cost despite energy availability being a key driver of economic growth. Similarly, economic growth is often independent of environmental withdrawals (resource extraction), which ignores potential feedback of resource shortages.