Chenfei Qu

Bio:  Chenfei Qu is a PhD Candidate in Energy and Climate Change Economics at the Institute of Energy, Environment, and Economy, Tsinghua University. She holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental engineering at Tsinghua University. Her research focuses on developing energy-environment-economic models to support energy and climate policymaking. Collaborating with her advisor, Prof. Xiliang Zhang, and Prof. Lawrence Goulder at Stanford University, she developed computable general equilibrium models to analyze China’s emissions trading system, renewable policies, carbon neutrality strategies, and international climate cooperations. These models are distinguished by their realistic settings, which account for factors particularly important to emerging economies, and their ability to capture complex interactions between energy, economic, and environmental systems. Her work has directly influenced policy recommendations on China’s emissions trading system and renewable policies.

Postdoctoral research project: Designing Equitable Solutions for Energy Transition. This research focuses on designing policies for the energy transition that balance equity and efficiency. The global energy transition is rapidly transforming economies and societies, affecting living costs and income levels. These impacts are unevenly distributed across regions and communities, posing risks of exacerbating existing inequalities and potentially hindering the progress of the energy transition. However, most existing studies on energy transitions focus on overall impacts but often overlook how these impacts are geographically distributed. I aim to address these gaps by developing advanced energy-economic simulation models that incorporate more spatial details. With these details, the models can offer clearer insights into the dimensions of equity-efficiency trade-offs of energy transitions, and, ultimately, provide essential quantitative information to support fair and effective policymaking in energy transitions.

Research focus: Policy, Economics & Society

Advisors:  Soloman Hsiang - Environmental Social Sciences  |  Lawrence Goulder- Economics