2026 Downing Public Lecture: The Price of Power: Electricity Pricing for a Cleaner and Fairer Energy Future

Presented by Professor Meredith Fowlie

The clean energy transition is doing more than reducing emissions, it is also reshaping how electricity is produced, priced, and consumed. Electricity prices are one of the most powerful, and under-appreciated, levers we have to steer this transition, and it influences energy consumption patterns, technology adoption, and how transition costs will be shared across households.

Drawing on evidence from electricity markets across the US, Europe, and beyond, Professor Fowlie will explore how current pricing structures can both hinder and help progress in the clean energy transition. She will also highlight emerging rate reforms and innovations designed to make electricity prices more fit for purpose, aligning everyday energy decisions with a faster, fairer, and more resilient energy transition.

About the Presenter:

Meredith Fowlie is a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, an affiliated professor at the Haas School of Business, and a faculty director at the Energy Institute at Haas, at the University of California, Berkeley. She holds the Class of 1935 Endowed Chair in Energy at UC Berkeley. She is also a co-director at the National Bureau of Economic Research in the Energy and Environmental Economics group and an affiliated faculty of the Energy and Resources Group.

Fowlie is an applied economist working at the intersection of industrial organisation, energy markets, and environmental economics. Much of her work investigates how market-based environmental regulation and emissions trading programs are working in practice. Fowlie is also interested in the demand side of energy markets and work that integrates methods and models from other disciplines into economic analysis of policy outcomes.

Her work has appeared in the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Economics and Statistics, and other academic journals.

Background: Downing Lecture Series

Distinguished visiting economists are invited to present at the Downing Lecture for the purpose of promoting analysis and discussion of economic and social research policy. The lectures series have been made possible by a generous fellowship that was established by friends and colleagues of the late Professor Richard Downing (BA (Hons) 1936), in memory of his life and work.

Richard Ivan Downing was Ritchie Professor of Research and Economics in the University from 1952 until his death in 1975. Not only did Professor Downing make significant contributions to economic research in this position, he also put much effort into guiding and fostering the research interests of students and staff. For twenty years he edited The Economic Record. He also played a prominent part in founding the now Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research.

This lecture will be delivered in-person. The lecture will commence at 6.30pm.

For additional information please email melbinstitute-tickets@unimelb.edu.au