Shanti Gamper-Rabindran

University of Pittsburgh

Based in

United States
North America

Shanti Gamper-Rabindran is a Professor in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs (GSPIA) and Department of Economics at the University of Pittsburgh. Her book America’s Energy Gamble (Cambridge University Press 2022) details how political, financial, and legal institutions entrench fossil fuel dependency and hinder the adoption of renewable energy, but how the average American can support the energy transition. Her edited book The Shale Dilemma: A Global Perspective on Fracking and Shale Development (University of Pittsburgh Press 2018) details how countries without strategies in place for securing affordable non-fossil energy and with less protections for local communities pursued shale development. Shale development took place largely without the extent of financial prudence and health and environmental protections needed to ensure equitable benefits. By contrast, countries with strategies in place to transition away from fossil fuels, strong climate commitments, and protections for local communities, given opposition from their citizens, did not pursue shale development. Her current work examines the renewable energy transition in Appalachia, including communities’ preferences and reskilling of the labor force; the role of the public utility commissions in decarbonizing the grid; and the renewable energy transition in the Carribeean.
She served on the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study panel on Enhancing the U.S. Chemical Economy through Investments in Fundamental Research in the Chemical Sciences in 2021-2022 and on the Policy Council of the Association of Public Policy and Management in 2018-2021. In 2020, she received the University of Pittsburgh’s Faculty Award on Sustainability for her contributions to research, teaching and service on sustainability. She served as the August-Wilhelm Scheer Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, at the Chair of Environment and Climate Policy and a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University. She serves on the advisory board of the Ohio River Valley Institute, which works on the Just Transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an M.Sc. in Environmental Management and B.A. in Jurisprudence from Oxford University where she was a Rhodes scholar, and an AB in Economic and Environmental Science & Public Policy from Harvard College.