Campus Directory

Division Baskin School of Engineering

Department/College/Unit Electrical and Computer Engineering

Title Professor
Professor, Technology Management in Sustainability

Affiliation Faculty

Other UCSC Campus Affiliation Environmental Studies Department

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Areas of Expertise Energy
Environmental Policy
Economics
Water

Web Site

Primary Office Location Jack Baskin Engineering Building
N/A

Additional Location(s) Engineering 2, Room 549B

Mail Stop SOE3

Biography, Education and Training

Yihsu Chen is an associate professor at Department of Technology Management, University of California Santa Cruz. Prior to joining UCSC, he held a faculty position at University of California Merced with a joint appointment with School of Engineering and School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts. He is also affiliated with UCE3 (University of California Center for Energy and Environmental Economics). Professor Chen's main research focuses on studying the impact of public policies on energy, water resources and transportation sectors. His research takes interdisciplinary approaches: quantitative models built upon economic principles and solved with operations research techniques. His work has received a number of INFORMS ENRE awards: 2004 best student paper (first place), 2013 and 2014 best publication in sustainability in second place and first place, respectively. Professor Chen's work typically is policy relevant. In particular, his work on emission trading policies has received considerable attention and also directly contributed to policy debates. For example, his early work with Energy Research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) on the European ETS (Emission Trading Scheme) windfall profits led to the European Commission auction off emission allowances in the second phase of the ETS. The work has received more than 550 Google citations. His work on the equivalence of emission trading programs with different point-of-regulation also partly helped California Air Resources Board finalize their decisions in implementing first-sellers approach to control greenhouse gas emissions associated with imported power. His other work includes life-cycle analysis of biofuel production and air pollution impact of public transit system, evaluation of ecosystem services, and etc. Professor Chen is also an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Power Systems (2013 --) and ASCE Journal of Energy Engineering (2013 --) as well as on the international advisory board of Energy Policy (2017--). He has co-edited a few special issues in Journal of Energy Engineering (2010), IEEE Transactions on Power System. He served as the newsletter editor of INFORMS ENRE during 2010-2013.

Research Interests

• Economics and policy in energy
• Water resources and transportation sectors