USAEE awards 'Best Student Paper' to Jill Horing

The United States Association for Energy Economics (USAEE) awarded “Best Student Paper” to PCHES researcher, Jill Horing, at the 39th USAEE/IAEE Conference for her work on Economic impacts of wildfire adaptation: Public Safety Power Shutoffs in California”.

In California, electric utilities intentionally shut off customers’ power during high wildfire risk weather to avoid igniting fires. These too impose costs on the customers and broader economy, but the impacts are not well quantified. Horing’s paper combines datasets on 2019 power shutoffs and fire simulations as input to an analytical general equilibrium model to assess the trade-offs between the cost of wildfires and that of an adaptation measure used to avoid them.

Launched in 2006, The Dennis J. O’Brien USAEE Best Student Paper Awards seek to “showcase and reward the best student work” in the field of energy economics. The 39th USAEE/IAEE North American Conference was held October 23-26, 2022 in Houston, Texas.

Horing is a Ph.D. candidate in Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Her work revolves around modeling complex human-environmental systems to improve scientific understanding and decision making. Her current work focuses on wildfire risk and management in California with projects on electricity ignition risk, resident adaptation behaviors, and interactions between wildfire management strategies.

To learn more, visit the award webpage.