Benjamin K. Sovacool

Benjamin K. Sovacool

Benjamin K. Sovacool is Director of the Danish Center for Energy Technology at AU Herning and a Professor of Social Sciences at Aarhus University. He is also Associate Professor at Vermont Law School and Director of the Energy Security and Justice Program at their Institute for Energy and the Environment. Sovacool's research interests include energy policy, environmental issues, and science and technology policy, and his research has taken him to 50 countries. He is the author or editor of sixteen books and 250 peer reviewed academic articles.[1] Sovacool's work has been referred to in academic publications such as Science, Nature, and Scientific American. He has written opinion editorials for the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle. Sovacool is a Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Contributing Author, and editor-in-chief of the refereed international journal Energy Research and Social Science which explores the interactions between energy systems and society.

Academic experience

Benjamin Sovacool is Director of the Center for Energy Technology at AU Herning and Professor of Business and Social Sciences at Aarhus University in Denmark.[2][3] Sovacool is also Visiting Associate Professor at Vermont Law School and founding Director of the Energy Security & Justice Program. This is located within the Institute for Energy and Environment, which aims to "expand global access to sustainable energy and craft national energy policies that adapt to climate change without worsening socioeconomic inequality".[4] Sovacool says "Too often, national and international energy policies have focused on protecting adequate supplies of conventional fuels with little or no regard for the long-term consequences to the people and cultures the policies are intended to benefit". The Program, in cooperation with the MacArthur Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, Asia Research Institute, and the National University of Singapore, has published a series of case studies examining energy security in Asia.[4] Sovacool lectures on energy security, alternative and renewable energy, environmental economics, and energy policy.[1]

Sovacool is a Contributing Author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) forthcoming Fifth Assessment (AR5) report on "Rural Livelihoods and Poverty". He also served in 2012 as an Erasmus Mundus Visiting Scholar at Central European University in Hungary. He has often consulted for the Asian Development Bank, United Nations Development Program, and United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific.[1]

Research work

Sovacool has authored more than 250 refereed academic articles and book chapters. His main area of interest is energy policy, but he has also published in the disciplines of "astronomy, bioethics, chemical engineering, environmental law, epidemiology, fisheries, forest management, geography, governance, political economy, political science, public policy and administration, science and technology studies, sociology, and technology transfer". His work has been referred to by Nobel Laureates and in well-known academic publications such as Science, Nature, and Scientific American. He has written opinion editorials for the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Chronicle.[1]

At the National University of Singapore, he led many research projects supported by the MacArthur Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation about improving energy security for impoverished rural Asian communities.[1]

Sovacool's research has taken him to more than 50 countries, including:[5]

Books

In 2007, Sovacool co-edited Energy and American Society: Thirteen Myths which has been reviewed in Energy Policy[6] and the Annals of the Association of American Geographers.[7] In 2008, he wrote The Dirty Energy Dilemma: What’s Blocking Clean Power in the United States which was published by Praeger and won a 2009 Nautilus Book Award.[8]

In Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power (2011) Sovacool says, following a detailed analysis, that there is a "consensus among a broad base of independent, nonpartisan experts that nuclear power plants are a poor choice for producing electricity", and that "energy efficiency programs and renewable power technologies are better than nuclear power plants".[9]

This is a full list of Benjamin Sovacool's books:

Selected articles

This is a selection of recent articles by Sovacool:[2]

Education

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 Vermont Law School (2013). "Benjamin K. Sovacool Biography".
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Aarhus University. "Professor Benjamin Sovacool".
  3. ↑ Aarhus University (2013). "Keynote speakers". PMA 2014 Conference.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 "VT Law School Launches Energy Security & Justice Project". Vermont Law School. January 24, 2012.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Kaitlin Gill (4 January 2012). "A Ball of Energy". John Carroll Magazine.
  6. ↑ Sioshansi, Fereidoon P. (2007). "Energy and American Society—Thirteen Myths (Book Review)" (PDF). Energy Policy 35: 6554–6555. doi:10.1016/j.enpol.2007.08.008.
  7. ↑ Pasqualetti, Martin J. (2008). "Review of Energy and American Society--Thirteen Myths, B. Sovacool, M. Brown (eds.)". Annals of the Association of American Geographers 98 (2) (Routledge). pp. 504–505. doi:10.1080/00045600801944210.
  8. ↑ Curriculum Vitae: Dr. Benjamin K. Sovacool
  9. ↑ Benjamin K. Sovacool (2011). "Contesting the Future of Nuclear Power". World Scientific. pp. 248–250.