Faculty Speaker Series: Global Energy Justice: How can leading thinkers about justice help us make better decisions about energy?

​Michael Dworkin will discuss the ways in which classical ‘justice-theorists’ can help resolve the ethical issues of developing and operating energy systems that meet the common statutory standard of being ‘just and reasonable’. His comments will link both 1) concrete, specific, decisions made by energy regulators and 2) the differing advice that theorists such as Aristotle, Bentham, Mills and Rawls would give for how to resolve those specific decisions. His talk will draw upon his recent book with Benjamin Sovacool Global Energy Justice, Cambridge University Press 2014, and will explore the challenges of teaching those matters in the upcoming eight-week course in the summer 2016 semester.

Bio: Michael Dworkin, Professor of Law at Vermont Law School (VLS) since 2005, has also been a litigator for US EPA, a management partner in an engineering firm, and a utility regulator.  He is the Director of the Institute for Energy and the Environment at VLS which is an international resource for energy law and policy. Michael Dworkin is on the Board of Vermont Energy Investment Corp (VEIC) and Vermont Electric Power Company (VELCO) and has served on the boards of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE) and the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI).​