Meet Dr. Enrica De Cian, Climate Change Expert and BU Visitor in April 2022
Dr. Enrica De Cian, Professor in Environmental Economics at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, Italy will be visiting Boston University in April 2022. She is an ERC (European Research Council) Starting Grant grantee with the project ENERGYA – Energy use for Adaptation. She is deputy coordinator of the research unit on Economic analysis of Climate Impacts and Policy at Fondazione Centro Euro-Mediterraneo sui Cambiamenti Climatici (CMCC) in Italy. In 2012, she was a visiting researcher at BU funded by the European Commission Global Marie Curie Research Fellowship. She has published in the fields of climate change economics, integrated assessment modelling, and energy economics.
During her April 2022 visit to BU, her faculty host is Dr. Ian Sue Wing, CISS affiliate and professor of earth and environment. Dr. De Cian will be meeting with faculty and students to discuss research opportunities and collaborations. The highlight of her visit with be a public lecture at the Global Development Policy Center on Wednesday April 27 from 2-3:30 pm in the Bay State Room at 121 Bay State Road in the Pardee School building. Her talk is entitled “Adaptation to Climate Change: Insights from the ENERGYA Project.” She will discuss a potentially dangerous form of adaptation to climate change: the adoption and utilization of air-conditioning worldwide. Register for her talk here.
CISS communications intern Lily Belisle interviewed Dr. De Cian, to learn more about her research, her deep interest in climate change, and her advice for students hoping to do research that makes a difference. Read their interview here.*
What made you decide to be an environmental economist? Why does social science matter to you?
When I started the University, I did not really have a clear understanding of what a degree in economics would yield, and I enrolled in the program Business and Management at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice. Fortunately, Introduction to Economics (micro and macro) was a compulsory course, and I was blessed with a professor who really made me become passionate about the Samuelson’s diagrams and analytical tools still used today to teach micro and macroeconomics in most universities. For me, that was the first game changer. That same professor was teaching environmental economics. And he has been the first one to teach environmental economics in Italy. What I liked was the use of analytical tools from economics to deal with real-world, and what I found, important issues. When I was a student, my favorite economist was [Nobel prize recipient Joseph] Stiglitz. So with hindsight, I feel I can say that I was intrigued by the idea of solving important economics questions, such as pollution, environmental degradation, growth and inequality. During my year abroad in Copenhagen I had the chance to study development economics. I ended up choosing courses at the intersection of environmental economics, macroeconomics, and development.
As an undergraduate/ early graduate student, did you know this area of work was where your interests would lie? How have you honed your focus over the years?
At that time, when I was a student certainly not. No doubt I did not have a broad vision, but I was just trying to harvest as many experiences as possible, as that was really my only chance. So those subjects I was choosing and studying were simply lining up. Now I look back and indeed it all makes sense. You can say that it is not by chance that that first topics I covered in my master thesis and then in my PhD were at the interface of macroeconomics, trade, and environmental economics. I really wanted to solve important problems, this is probably why I started from macroeconomic, climate-energy models, like the DICE model developed by Yale economist William Nordhaus.
How does research at the intersection of environmental and social sciences provide unique or valuable insights?
As economists, when we talk about climate change, we are always careful to highlight that we do not have to save the planet, the planet knows how to take care of “itself”, but it is our relationship with the planet that matters to us. It is precisely the intersection between environmental and social sciences that can provide insights on how to restore a balanced human-nature relationship. Economics is a social science that studies the behaviors of individuals, communities, governments, and therefore can really offer guidance for a healthier relationship with nature. Climate adaptation, which is the focus of my research at the moment, is also about how people, communities, governments change their behaviors to adapt to current or expected climate stimuli.
What piqued your interest in the ENERGYA research project? What are some of its most significant implications?
The idea of the ENERGYA project was really super simple. But nobody thought about that very simple, yet important aspect of adaptation to climate change. We need to adapt to the already observed and widespread impacts of climate change. But what if adaptation in itself ends up aggravating the problem? Is there a feedback loop we are overlooking? What if this feedback loop becomes a vicious cycle? Scientists have drawn attention to important feedback loops and tipping points that could accelerate global warming. But such risk exists also in the realm of human behaviors. We adapt to climate change by increasing the use of air-conditioning. But, when I wrote the project, no single study has ever quantified what could happen if many of us will simply turn their air-conditioners on. We are now working on this question. The bottom line is that, if you need more energy to adapt to climate change, this makes mitigation more difficult. You need a higher carbon price to achieve the same amount of emission reduction. Energy costs are higher, with implications on final consumers as well. And this makes mitigation even more essential. When these implications are taken into account, mitigation becomes an opportunity to actually reduce energy costs.
How do you feel the international nature of your professional experience has shaped your perspective in approaching the issues you discuss?
The international nature of my education, in the first place, and then of my professional experience truly shaped my skills and my attitude. Though I spent quite some time in other European countries – Denmark, Belgium, Germany – I must say that the visiting periods I spent in Boston – first as a PhD student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and later on as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral researcher at BU – have been the second major game changer in my career. It was when I was a visiting student at MIT that I came in touch with Professor Sue Wing, about twenty years ago. At that time nobody was teaching environmental-economic modelling. The Joint Program at MIT was a leading institute and I went there to learn. Professor Sue Wing really helped me go through the hurdles anyone involved in a learning-by-doing process would encounter. I then came back again in 2012 as a postdoctoral researcher under his supervision. Professor Sue Wing was interested in the approach I used for a research paper a few years before, and starting from there, we developed a common research agenda that eventually led to the ENERGYA project. I have been extremely lucky with the persons I met thorough my career.
What are your goals during your visit to Boston University?
I hope to meet as many professors, researchers, and students as possible to deepen and extend the collaboration between Boston University and Ca’ Foscari, both for research opportunities but also in relation to their study programs. My visit is partly supported by the ENERGYA project and by the Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility program. Erasmus is a great EU-funded program that every year supports the mobility of hundreds of students and faculty members not only in Europe but also overseas. For some students, this is the only possibility. I hope my visit is a building block for more opportunities for students, not only from Venice, but also for BU’s students who would like to come and visit us.
*Interview was lightly edited for length and clarity.