After a delicious dinner at Herr Doktor Professor Mark Smith’s house on Sunday evening (thanks again for hosting us Mark), we started off the week with a presentation by Colorado College graduate, Emil Dimantchev ’11.
Emil Dimantchev was an outstanding economics major at CC and eventually landed at Thomson Reuters (formerly
known as Point Carbon). He interned for one year and then continued as a senior carbon market analyst. Currently, he researches U.S. state climate and energy policies and their impact on air pollution and human health at MIT. Throughout his work, he has done extensive analysis, consultations and forecasts with carbon markets. We were fortunate to have him join our class and share his perspective.
If you are familiar with carbon markets, you may know how complex it is to put a price on something intangible such as greenhouse gas emissions. Many countries and states in the U.S. have opted into carbon taxes and emissions trading systems (ETS) – two ways that the carbon market operates. Emil broke down the complexities of these systems by diving into the design components for carbon taxes and emissions trading systems and gave us an overview of the EU’s ETS (pictured above). It was interesting to understand how different shocks throughout the world, such as recessions, can affect carbon prices. Overall, it was a great opportunity as students to hear from someone with an understanding of how carbon markets operate and continue to evolve.
Thanks again to Emil for sharing his time with us and a big thank you to Mark Smith for organizing his visit. Leading up to our departure for Germany this Friday, we are continuing to hone in on various topics that we will most likely encounter during our time at the COP-23. Stay tuned for more updates.
Prost,
Sam Sheridan ‘18
