Environmental and Energy Economics University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Overview

The Environmental and Energy Economics MCom from University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg Key Facts: 

In recent decades, environmental economics have increasingly become critically important to analyse and understand environmental, energy and climate problems and to offer the basis for designing policy solutions. 

Particularly, recent years have seen a proliferation of policy interest to change energy systems from being centralized and carbon intensive to dDset out by the Paris Agreement of limiting global mean surface temperature rise to below 2 °C. At the same time, new energy markets have been developing, which has shifted environmental regulations focus to increasingly targeting the energy sectors. These developments call for a critical understanding of the fundamentals of how these markets operate so that optimal energy policy can be designed. Knowledge of energy economics thus, plays a critical role in meeting this demand.

The field of Environmental and Energy Economics at University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg is designed to provide a thorough understanding of economics and policies associated with climate change and broader foundation of applied microeconomics in energy, environmental and natural resources. More specifically, it applies microeconomics theory and quantitative methods to rigorously examine contemporary environmental, climate, natural resources and energy problems.

Career opportunities:

There is good reason to believe that the demand for training in environmental, resource and energy economics is high in South Africa, considering the apparent shortage of trained manpower in these fields. Graduate level training in this field is uncommon across the African continent. Currently, only a few South African Universities offer training in these fields, but commonly as an elective course only rather than as a specialization field. And yet, the plethora of environmental problems and the government’s and private sector’s  commitments to overcome them suggests the unmet demand of the expertise in these fields.