James L. Sweeney

James L. Sweeney is an American economist and engineer specializing in energy economics, environmental policy, and natural resource economics. He is professor emeritus of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University and a senior fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) and the Precourt Institute for Energy. He was a senior fellow of Hoover Institution.

Education Sweeney received a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in engineering-economic systems from Stanford University.

Career Sweeney joined the Stanford faculty in 1971 as an assistant professor in the department of engineering-economic systems (EES). He was promoted to associate professor in 1976 and to full professor in 1980. He served as department chair from 1991 to 1996 and again from 1996 to 1999 following the merger between the EES department and the operations research department. which focused on interdisciplinary research into cost-effective approaches to energy efficiency and climate mitigation.

During the 1970s energy crisis, Sweeney held senior leadership positions at the Federal Energy Administration, directing national energy demand and supply forecasting used in federal policy analysis. as a board member of the California Council on Science and Technology, and as the first chair of the State of California Petroleum Market Advisory Committee.

Sweeney is a co-founder and continuing co-convener of the international Behavior, Energy & Climate Change Conference, an annual forum on the role of human behavior in energy use and climate outcomes, and he also established the BECC Fellows Program to support early-career researchers. He served for more than a decade on the External Advisory Council of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and was among the founding members of the International Association for Energy Economics.

He has received the Distinguished Service Award from the Federal Energy Administration (1975), the Adelman-Frankel Award from the United States Association for Energy Economics (2007), and the Outstanding Contribution Award from the International Association for Energy Economics (2008).

Research Sweeney's research has focused on energy and environmental economics, electricity and gasoline market dynamics, depletable and renewable resource economics, energy demand and price modeling, environmental regulation, climate policy, and housing market dynamics. Earlier in his career, his theoretical research on housing market dynamics and on the economics of depletable natural resources helped establish analytical frameworks that influenced subsequent scholarship.

Selected publications Books