Uncertainty quantification and risk assessment

There are multiple sources uncertainty and risk from climate change and climate policies. However, not all sources of uncertainty and risk have the same impact on energy systems and markets. One of our goals is to classify and characterize different sources of risk, including both physical and financial risks. We also develop metrics that facilitate the identification of risks that have large impacts on decision making.

Decision making under risk and uncertainty

Uncertainties and risks from climate change and climate policies make decision making very difficult. We develop planning models and methodologies to support decision making in energy systems, considering a broad range of uncertainties and risks. Some of the tools we use include stochastic programming, robust optimization and distributionally robust optimization. We also develop and implement decomposition algorithms; these are needed when dealing with complex planning problems.

Market design and regulation

We address issues about electricity and environmental market design using a combination of tools from operations research and microeconomics. Some of the topics we address include electricity market design for high shares of generation from renewables, carbon pricing, modeling and analysis of administrative price controls, and the design and modeling of markets for hedging products.