News Detail

Media Advisory: Carnegie Mellon Professor Jay Apt To Testify At Congressional Hearing on Clean Energy Bill

Author:Mark D. Burd 412-268-3486

Release Date: Apr 22, 2009

Event: Carnegie Mellon University Professor Jay Apt is scheduled to testify at a hearing of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Subcommittee in Washington, D.C., on “The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.”

When: 9:30 a.m., Thursday, April 23.

Where: Room 2123, Rayburn Office Building, Washington, D.C. 20515.

Apt, executive director of the Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center, distinguished service professor of engineering and public policy, and an associate research professor at the Tepper School of Business, is expected to urge the congressional subcommittee to focus on reducing carbon dioxide rather than singling out renewables, and let alternative technologies compete to achieve the goals of reducing carbon dioxide emissions, improving environmental quality in general, increasing energy security and sustainability, and lowering electricity prices. His testimony will draw on a paper he authored along with Carnegie Mellon’s Lester Lave, the Harry B. and James H. Higgins Professor of Economics and Finance and professor of engineering and public policy, and university Ph.D. student Sompop Pattanariyankool. The paper appeared in the fall 2008 Issues in Science and Technology: “A National Renewable Portfolio Standard? Not Practical” (http://www.issues.org/25.1/apt.html). 

 The committee’s chairman, U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), and subcommittee chairman, U.S. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), are holding four days of hearings to discuss the draft of the bill. In February, Professor Lave testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on the results of his research.