Murray Earns Prestigious Fulbright Award

DURHAM, N.C. -- Brian Murray, director of the Environmental Economics Program at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, has been awarded a Fulbright Visiting Research Chair Award in Environment and Economy. Through Fulbright Canada, he will spend the spring 2015 semester conducting research on carbon pricing systems abroad at the University of Ottawa.

“This richly deserved award honors Brian for the years of relevant work on the frontier of environmental economics,” said Tim Profeta, director of the Nicholas Institute. “At the University of Ottawa, Brian will have a wonderful opportunity to dedicate himself to pursuing work on carbon markets that he can bring back to policymakers around the globe seeking to create such markets. We also hope that Brian’s presence at Ottawa will build strong bridges between our work and the work of the Institute of the Environment and Sustainable Prosperity.”

Out of roughly 8,000 grants awarded each year by the program, approximately 900 are visiting scholar awards.

From January to May 2015 Murray will work with the University of Ottawa’s policy research institution, Sustainable Prosperity. There, he will participate in research that examines the the integration of emerging subnational carbon markets in the United States and Canada that are created by trading carbon emissions allowances. The markets encourage countries and companies to limit carbon dioxide emissions.

The work will include the design of an efficient market-based emissions trading system—covering planned linkages in these countries and focusing on rules for carbon offsets, with an emphasis on forest and agricultural activities.

“Brian is a great fit with the Institute of the Environment and Sustainable Prosperity for many reasons: his research focuses on market-based approaches to environmental problems, and he is a respected scholar who is actively involved in policy reform,” said Stewart Elgie, director of the Institute of Environment and chair of Sustainable Prosperity. “Also, the Nicholas Institute is a lot like Sustainable Prosperity—a policy-focused institute at a university, with a major focus on environment-economy issues.”

Murray is among the original designers of the allowance price reserve approach for containing prices in carbon markets that was adopted by California and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) cap-and-trade programs. Throughout his 21-year research career, he has produced more than 75 peer-reviewed publications on topics ranging from the design of market-based environmental policies and the effectiveness of renewable energy subsidies to the evaluation of programs to protect natural habitats such as forests, coastal and marine ecosystems.

The Fulbright Scholar Program is sponsored and funded by the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, with additional funding coming from participating governments and host institutions in the United States and abroad. 

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