Georgia Tech Energy Day
Join us for a plenary energy policy panel
April 23, 2025
As part of Georgia Tech’s Annual Energy Day on April 23, EPIcenter will host three nationally recognized experts in energy economics and public policy. Our distinguished panelists have held leadership roles in climate and energy at the U.S. Treasury, the White House Council of Economic Advisers, and the Federal Reserve Bank. They have also served as advisors to the U.S. EPA, NREL, and the National Academies of Sciences, among other institutions.
The panelists will share insights from their experience working at federal, state, and local levels to advance clean energy and environmental solutions, with a focus on key economic and policy opportunities shaping the future.
Read more about our experts below.
Sanya Carley
Dr. Sanya Carley is Presidential Distinguished Professor of Energy Policy and City Planning at the Stuart Weitzman School of Design and the Mark Alan Hughes Faculty Director of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a secondary appointment at the Wharton School and is a University Fellow at Resources for the Future. She also co-directs the Energy Justice Lab. Dr. Carley’s research focuses on energy justice and just transitions, energy insecurity, electricity and transportation markets, and public perceptions of energy infrastructure and technologies. With the Energy Justice Lab team, she built and maintains the Utility Disconnection Dashboard. She is an author of the Fifth National Climate Assessment report and a member of several National Academy of Sciences groups, including the Innovation Policy Forum; the Harnessing Social Science to Achieve Timely, Durable, Equitable and Resilient Energy Transition author team; and the Roundtable on Macroeconomics and Climate-related Risks and Opportunities. Dr. Carley received her Ph.D. in public policy from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, M.S. in urban and regional planning from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and bachelor’s degrees in economics and sustainable development from Swarthmore College.
Arik Levinson
Arik Levinson is a Professor of Economics at Georgetown University and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is currently one of the editors of the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists. He previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Climate and Energy Economics at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, from 2022 to 2024, and as a Senior Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers, from 2010 to 2011. Arik’s recent projects calculate the degree to which industrialized countries have been offshoring their most polluting economic activities, and evaluate the way some industries and the U.S. government have proposed to calculate carbon emissions caused by grid-connected electricity use.
David Rapson
David Rapson is a Chancellor’s Leadership Professor in the UC Davis Economics Department, Assistant Vice President at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and Co-Director of the Davis Energy Economics Program (DEEP). The central objective of Professor Rapson’s work is to understand and demonstrate how consumers and firms respond to incentives, and what this implies for effective energy, environmental and economic policy. His work examines a central tension of the energy transition. Government intervention can improve outcomes when markets fail and when policies create proper incentives; but poorly conceived policies may undermine goals that they are trying to achieve or inadvertently harm peoples’ economic circumstances. Dr. Rapson’s research seeks to understand the difference.
Professor Rapson is an expert on electric vehicles, energy markets, climate policy and regulation, and has recently written on the effects of sanctions on Russia. His research appears in the American Economic Review, Science, Nature, and other academic journals. Dr. Rapson is a Co-Editor of The Energy Journal and Treasurer of the Association of Environmental & Resource Economists. He has held various posts in service to the profession and the community including Treasurer of the US Association of Energy Economists, Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, and Editorial Council member of the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economics. He earned degrees from Dartmouth College (AB), Queen’s University (MA) and Boston University (PhD in Economics).