Prof. Mort Webster Receives $750K NSF Grant

for Climate Change Research

July 1, 2008

ESD Assistant Professor Mort David Webster has been named Principal Investigator of a $750,000 grant from the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Human and Social Dynamics Program.

The grant's other investigators are Henry D. Jacoby, Co-Director of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Climate Change; Karen Fisher-Vanden and Chris Forest of Penn State University; and David Popp of Syracuse University and the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Titled "Collaborative Research: An Improved Model of Endogenous Technical Change Considering Uncertain R&D Returns and Uncertain Climate Response," the three-year research project to be undertaken by Professor Webster and his colleagues will counter previous models used in climate change studies that fail to take into account critical uncertainties, particularly in regard to the research and development of improved energy technologies.

Professor Webster's team will seek to develop a model framework that explicitly takes into account uncertainties inherent in R&D. By eliminating biases found in current models, they aim to improve the analysis tools available to decision-makers on the timing of emissions reductions and investments in technology R&D.

Specifically, the representation of technical change and its relation to R&D expenditure will be calibrated to historical experience with U.S. patents. The model will improve the representation of them uncertainty in the climate response to greenhouse gas emissions by constraining that uncertainty to a range consistent with 20th century climate. These components will be integrated into a single framework, one that can be used to explore decision-making about emissions reductions and R&D expenditures under uncertainty.