Multiple market failures along with policies at federal and state levels make it difficult to predict the net systems and emissions cost impact, in both the short- and long-run, of corporate and government green power procurement strategies. I define a suite of research questions that need to be addressed to understand whether such strategies are efficient means to reduce emissions, ineffectual, or even counter productive. Market models are proposed, based on equilibrium and Stackelberg formulations based on optimization and complementarity methods, to address those questions.

Ben Hobbs earned his PhD from Cornell University. He has been at JHU since 1995 in what is now the Department of Environmental Health & Engineering, and was previously on the faculty at Case Western Reserve University and the research staff at Brookhaven and Oak Ridge National Labs (US). The work reported here was conducted while on sabbatical at the Florence School of Regulation; he has had previous sabbaticals at University of Washington, CalTech, Comillas Pontifical University, the Netherlands Energy Research Center, and Cambridge University. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE and Fellow of INFORMS, and received a Presidential Young Investigator Award from President Reagan. He is a member of the State of Maryland's (Climate) Mitigation Work Group and vice-chair of that state’s Air Quality Control Advisory Council. He chairs the California power market’s surveillance committee.

Dr. Hobbs leads EPICS, a NSF Global Climate center focusing on managing renewable-dominated power systems. This center is a collaboration with Imperial College, University of Melbourne, CSIRO, Georgia Tech, Resources for the Future, and UC Davis. Dr. Hobbs also participates in the Baltimore Socio-Environmental Collaborative, where his group's CityHEAT model is a key tool for organizing and communicating information on heat wave strategies.