Speaker biographies

Dallas Burtraw is a senior fellow at Resources for the Future. Mr. Burtraw's research interests include the design of environmental regulation, the costs and benefits of environmental regulation, and the regulation and restructuring of the electricity industry.
Recently, Mr. Burtraw investigated the effects on the value of assets of electricity generation companies of alternative approaches to implementing emissions permit trading programs. He is evaluating the use of emission trading to achieve carbon emission reductions in the European Union. He also has helped to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of trading programs for nitrogen dioxide in the eastern United States and sulfur dioxide trading programs under the Clean Air Act Amendments. He contributed to the valuation of the benefits of ecological improvements due to reduced acidification in the Adirondack Mountains.

Lee Lane has been the executive director of the Climate Policy Center (CPC) since the founding of its predecessor organization in 2000. Mr. Lane leads the development and implementation of the organization’s strategic options and directs its overall management. During his tenure as executive director, CPC has expanded its scope to encompass emission control policies, energy research and development, and the search for effective international agreements on climate change. Recently, Mr. Lane completed three book chapters on climate policy. The most, “Climate Change and Security Policy,” will be published in Proceedings from the First Annual Symposium on Emerging Issues in National and International Security from the American University National Security and Law Society. Another article, “A New Paradigm for U.S. Climate Policy,” appears in Climate Policy for the 21st Century: Meeting the Long-Term Challenge of Global Warming, published by the Center for Transatlantic Relations of the School of Advanced International Studies of Johns Hopkins University. Mr. Lane is the author of “The Political Economy of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Controls,” which was published in Punctuated Equilibrium and the dynamics of U.S. Environmental Policy (Yale University Press, 2006). Mr. Lane has also authored several climate policy white papers that can be found on CPC’s website.

W. David Montgomery is vice president of CRA International and directs CRA’s global energy and environment practice. He is an internationally recognized authority in energy and environmental policy and regulation. Mr. Montgomery also has expertise in the area of energy price forecasts, having supervised the U.S. Department of Energy’s energy forecasting and economic analysis activities for a number of years. He was previously deputy assistant secretary of energy and assistant director of the Congressional Budget Office, where he was responsible for all natural resource and commerce program analysis. He previously taught at the California Institute of Technology and at Stanford University. Mr. Montgomery has published widely on oil, natural gas, and electric utility regulation; on the use of economic incentives in regulatory programs; and on the taxes and environmental regulations affecting energy industries.

Samuel Thernstrom is the managing editor of the AEI Press and director of AEI’s W. H. Brady Program in Culture and Freedom. He served as director of communications at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (2001–03), speechwriter to Governor George E. Pataki, and as a spokesman for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

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