PhD defense: Patrick André Narbel

On Tuesday 10 June 2014 Patrick André Narbel will hold a trial lecture on a prescribed topic and defend his thesis for the PhD degree at NHH.

Energy is a key component of our lives. All goods and services surrounding us require energy, either to be useful or during its production.

In our early history, humans learned to use wood and solar energy (heating) as well as wind (transport) to cover their energy needs. The invention of the steam engine changed the way we lived, progressively reducing our use of renewable energy as we shifted to and expanded our use of fossil energies.

These energy sources have contributed to making the society what it is today. However, concerns about resource scarcity and climate change have fostered a renewed interest for non-hydro based forms of renewable energy, especially wind and solar energy. This is because it is these sources of energy which can contribute to solving both of these grand challenges.

The scarcity issue leaves little room for doubt that renewable energy represents the future of energy. The threat of climate change is likely to increase the speed of a transition towards a sustainable energy supply. However, shifting to cleaner energy is no easy feat and it requires addressing many concerns relating to the economics and engineering of renewable energy.

Identifying where we stand today in our understanding of renewable energy and of the barriers lying ahead is the major quest pursued in this thesis. More specifically, the emphasis is put on the economic apprehensions surrounding the transition to a more sustainable energy mix.

In that domain one finds many questions of interest that to a large extent have gone unanswered. For example, where do we stand with our ability to economically harness renewable energy sources? Why would countries invest in these comparatively expensive sources of energy?

Which countries are doing this and how can the deployment of intermittent sources of energy be facilitated in an efficient manner? These questions cover some of the concerns I have attempted to address during my PhD studies.

Patrick André Narbel is born in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1986. He has been PhD-candidate at the Department of Business and Management Science, NHH. Narbel has a MSc in Energy, Natural Resources and the Environment and CEMS Master in International Management, both at NHH Norwegian School of Economics.