Julia Frayer

Julia Frayer, an advisory board member for the Boston University Institute for Global Sustainability (IGS), is a graduate of Boston University and a partner at economic consulting firm London Economics International LLC. At the advice of her graduate advisor from Boston University, Frayer joined LEI in 1998 – right at the early days of broad restructuring of electric industries around the world. She is a thought leader on energy-related issues and a well-known industry expert on market design, risk management, and regulatory issues relating to electricity and other infrastructure industries. Frayer has conducted and published numerous studies on ‘grid of the future’ market outlooks, innovative rate design, and adaptive business models for ensuring reliability and affordability of electricity in the energy transition. In her work, Frayer relies on rigorous data analysis and advanced quantitative analytical techniques such as computable general equilibrium, econometrics, machine learning (AI), simulation models, and application of survey methods. Frayer was a pioneer in applying real options techniques to the valuation of various electricity assets, including peaking generation, energy storage and transmission assets that leverage fuel, inter-temporal or geographical arbitrage of sub-hourly market prices on the power grid. More generally, Frayer has a deep knowledge of the industry and market landscape, for both the restructured (deregulated) and regulated segments of the electricity industry. She works with a diverse set of clients in the US and abroad, including utilities, independent power producers, trading firms, regional transmission organizations and independent system operators, private equity and other financial investors in the sector, as well as policymakers and Federal and state regulators.