Join SFI’s monthly seminar on the first or second Thursday of the month from 4:00 - 5:00 pm PT to meet our faculty and fellows and learn more about our ongoing research projects. We’ll cover innovative policy and financial mechanisms designed to rapidly decarbonize the global economy.

Up next on Thursday, November 7:

The urgency of climate change mitigation has led to widespread adoption of emissions avoidance projects to both reduce and offset emissions. At the core of offset integrity lie leakage, additionality, and permanence. Leakage and additionality, carbon market shorthand for imprecise measures of the economics concept of elasticities and externalities in a short-term or partial equilibrium economy, collapse over time in general equilibrium. As a result, leakage and additionality for avoided emissions projects deconstruct into temporary emissions delays, or the unfortunate absence of permanence. We examine implications of these conclusions in the context of Guyana’s forest protection program under the ART TREES HFLD standard, and early coal retirement projects such as the Energy Transition Accelerator, Singapore's TRACTION program, and the Coal to Clean Credit Initiative. We conclude that avoided emissions investments should be considered contributions to a climate transition but require separation from attribution and accountability.

Speaker bios:

Alicia Seiger is a lecturer at Stanford Law School and leads sustainability and energy finance initiatives at Stanford Law, Graduate School of Business, and the Doerr School for Sustainability. Alicia has served as an advisor to the Governors of California and New York, the New York State Comptroller, and numerous pension fund, endowment, and family office CIOs on the topics of climate risk, opportunity, and resiliency. A student of sustainability since the early 1990s, Alicia has designed and executed climate and energy strategies for businesses, foundations, investors, and NGOs for over two decades. She has led on the management teams of multiple startups, including at TerraPass, a pioneer of the US voluntary carbon offset market, and Flycast Communications, one of the world’s first web advertising networks. She co-founded Stanford Professionals in Energy (SPIE) and serves on the boards of Ceres, Prime Coalition, and The E-liability Institute. Alicia also serves on the Editorial Board of the Oxford Open Climate Change Journal.

Her first book, "Settling Climate Accounts: Navigating the Road to Net Zero" contextualizes the history of climate action over the past three decades, examines the rough edges of net zero in practice, and makes recommendations for the road ahead. Alicia received her BA from Duke University in a self-designed curriculum focused on environmental science and policy and cultural anthropology and earned her MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Marc Roston is a Senior Research Scholar at the Precourt Institute for Energy in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability where he leads research efforts in carbon accounting and carbon markets, financial institution transitions and climate-related insurance markets.

Prior to joining Stanford in 2020, Roston spent 25 years in the asset management industry where he held senior investment positions ranging from quantitative equity to private equity and everything in between. Roston advises financial institutions large and small on a diverse range of investment activities, with a particular emphasis on the intersection of insurance, hedge funds and private equity. He has served on the boards of public and private companies, as well as the investment committees of endowments and foundations.

Prior to forming his own investment and advisory firm, from 2004 to 2008, he was a Managing Director at Silver Creek Capital Management, a $7 billion alternative investment firm based in Seattle, WA. While at Silver Creek, Roston held many roles, including chair of the investment committee, and head of risk management. In addition, he managed a financial services private equity fund where he launched several banks and insurance companies.

Roston served as Investment Manager in the investment arm of the global consulting firm McKinsey & Company. At McKinsey, he led the domestic long/short equity investment team which oversaw more than $500 million of investment exposures. He also managed asset allocation funds for the retirement plans, and developed a number of special situation investments.

Roston began his career at J. P. Morgan Investment Management, where he worked in quantitative research and long/short equity portfolio management after completing a PhD in Economics from the University of Chicago and a B.S. in Economics at Carnegie Mellon University.