Model of Persuasion
A Chilean engineer-economist employs math to show the consequences of—and possible answers to—climate change.
By Jennifer Pocock
Last December 12, representatives from 196 nations rose to their feet and cheered wildly as French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius announced the signing of the Paris Agreement. It was the culmination of two weeks of grueling global bargaining over the fate of the planet at the COP21 Climate Change Conference. Each participating entity brought its own action plan for addressing carbon outputs and for doing its part to mitigate Earth’s rising temperature.
Now the question becomes: What are the consequences for Earth and for the world’s economies when countries adopt climate-friendly laws and regulations? That’s where Enzo Sauma comes in. Both an engineer and an economist, Sauma is an expert in framing optimal solutions to large, complicated problems involving the environment.
An associate professor of engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile (UC), Sauma is driven by a love of mathematical models and an urge to improve social welfare. In the four years leading up to COP21, he led research on Chile’s power sector and played a key role in preparing the Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios (MAPS) project adopted by Chile in 2011. MAPS, which Sauma says “tries to model all of the consequences of different scenarios in terms of policy for engagement and mitigation of climate change,” formed the basis of the climate proposal that President Michelle Bachelet took to the Paris summit.
“One thing I study is the impact of different economic instruments,” he says. “For example, what happens if you institute a carbon tax? Or [if you institute] a cap-and-trade system at a national level, what is the impact to the country?” Sauma’s research looks at power system investments and how they can improve the quality of life in different areas. “One is in lowering prices [for energy]; another is in improving air quality, or lowering pollution rates.”
Sauma, 43, who holds B.S. degrees in industrial and electrical engineering from UC as well as a master’s and Ph.D. from University of California Berkeley in industrial engineering operational research, with minors in public policy and economics, also studied at Johns Hopkins university on a Fullbright scholarship in 2011-2012 and has since conducted seminars at Northwestern University. He began his climate-related research when he read about the global impact that local and regional pollution mitigation could have. Santiago, Chile’s capital, where he lives with his wife, three daughters, and two-year-old son, “is a very polluted city,” he says. “We have severe problems with pollution here, and we need to do something.”
Most companies and individuals won’t help combat pollution without an economic incentive, Sauma says. His models help find the best way to create these and persuade policymakers to accept them.
“Chile is a small country, and there aren’t many academics in this field,” he says, giving him enough impact to help pass Chile’s first emissions standards in 2011. Hoping to expand his influence, he recently received a Leadership Public Engagement Fellowship from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which will include a week in Washington, D.C., and a year taking courses remotely to improve his communication skills. He’d like to serve as a bridge between scientists and policymakers and thus improve regulations. “I think that many times, policymakers make a decision based on the summary and don’t read the whole report,” he says.
At UC, Sauma teaches microeconomics at the undergraduate level and, at the graduate level, introduction to mechanical design and energy economics. His grad students take on semester-long, real-world projects, “often related to what’s happening with the energy sector in the country,” he says, and joined him in working on MAPS.
Post-COP21, Sauma hopes the heightened awareness of and interest in climate change will encourage governments to put more money into research. “Here in Chile, we spend less than one percent of [the gross national product] on research. And imagine, if that is the total amount of money that we put into research, for climate change, it’s even less.” His own contribution, he hopes, will be persuading his own and other countries to cut carbon emissions by correctly modeling what could happen if they do—and if they don’t.
Jennifer Pocock is assistant editor of Prism.
Image Courtesy of Enzo Sauma/Francis Igot