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- Efird, Brian
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About
Brian Efird is the Director for Strategic Partnerships at KAPSARC. His responsibilities include planning and oversight of KAPSARC’s global outreach and engagement, as well as forging multiparty collaborations that conceptualize and facilitate high impact, applied research projects in the areas of energy economics, policy, and sustainability. He previously served as the Program Director for Policy and Decision Science, managing a team of researchers that covered a global program of work focused on the nexus between geopolitics, domestic and local politics, energy, and climate change. This included multi-disciplinary analysis of the geopolitics of energy and the environment, quantitative models of collective decision-making processes (CDMPs), geospatial information system (GIS) applications to energy economics and energy policy, and the impact of political phenomena on global energy markets. Dr. Efird was previously a Senior Research Fellow at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.; a consultant on defense and international security matters in Washington; and a consultant applying quantitative models to support corporate, investment banking, and legal negotiations in New York. He received a Ph.D. in Political Science and M.A. in International Studies from Claremont Graduate University.
Publications
01 November 2023
Renewables and Geopolitics in the Middle EastThe energy transition is fundamentally transforming geopolitics, with renewable energy and other decarbonization options reshaping existing energy markets, trade flows, and energy security strategies. What new opportunities and challenges await us? Will it p... Read Book Chapter
15 February 2023
Spatial Modeling of Bargaining Among Stakeholders in Energy Policy: The Case of Japanese Nuclear Plants
his paper evaluates the evolving political will in Japan to restart nuclear power plants to generate electric power, in light of the country’s political and economic developments over the past few years. We apply a model of collective decision-making processes (CDMPs), using the KAPS...
27 October 2019
Can Japanese Nuclear Power Be Restarted Sooner? A Simulation of Alternative ScenariosThis study assesses whether there are politically plausible paths to more quickly gain support for restarting Japanese nuclear power plants and considers alternative scenarios. It builds on the 2018 KAPSARC discussion paper, “The Policymaking Process to Restart Japanese Nuclear Power...
14 May 2019
Energy Governance in China: The Structures and Processes of Government Decision-MakingThis paper provides an overview of how key decisions i... The paper’s aim is to provide insights for those outside China who wish to better understand Chinese energy governance, from policymakers, researchers and academics, to diplomats, or corporations wishing to invest in the country.
31 December 2018
The Policymaking Process to Restart Japanese Nuclear Power Plants
- The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) appears to be a credible and effective voice in building political acceptance of restarti...
- Despite the turbulence in Japanese politics in 2017, the trend of slowly growing political will in favor of nuclear power appears to be largely unchanged.
04 October 2018
Assessment of the Political Feasibility of Developing a GCC Power MarketCountries in the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf, commonly known as the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), established a regional power grid to support member countries’ high voltage networks in 2001 but, to date, the system has remained underutilized. The intended p...
10 October 2017
The Political Feasibility of Policy Options for the UAE’s Energy TransitionThe United Arab Emirates (UAE) has said it wishes to transition toward a less carbon-intensive energy system, both as part of its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), and as one of a number of investments ...
01 May 2017
Support for a Carbon Tax in China: A Collective Decision-Making Process Simulation Using the KAPSARC Toolkit for Behavioral AnalysisChina, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide, is taking steps to combat the effects of climate change on its environment. The path it takes to mitigate the effects of pollution will have a significant impact on the global carbon reduction agenda. In this study, we focus on th...
08 August 2016
Energy Relations and Policy Making in AsiaTrade between the economies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and North East Asia (NEA) reached $471 billion in 2013, based almost entirely on oil and gas. The GCC sends 44 percent of its exports to NEA, which depends on the GCC region for a very high proportion of its oil import...
24 December 2015
Multidimensional Bargaining Using KTABThis paper (Multidimensional KTAB) is a technical discussion paper designed as a follow on to An Introduction to the KAPSARC Toolkit for Behavioral Analysis using one-dimensional spatial models (Unidimensional KTAB). It extends the original framework of KTAB to explain the analysis d...
06 July 2015
Reforming the Role of State-Owned Enterprise in China’s Energy Sector: An Analysis of Collective Decision-Making Processes Using the KAPSARC Toolkit for Behavioral Analysis (KTAB)What are the prospects for reform of the Chinese energy sector? This question is the subject of much debate both inside and outside China. Since coming to power in November 2012, China’s new government has issued a series of statements on reform, clearly an important part of the coun...
07 May 2015
An Introduction to the KAPSARC Toolkit for Behavioral Analysis (KTAB)The KAPSARC Toolkit for Behavioral Analysis (KTAB) is freely available, state-of-the-art software that has been designed to enable the rigorous and systematic analysis of collective decision-making processes (CDMPs). KTAB is being designed with three types of users in mind. The progr...
06 January 2015
The KAPSARC Energy Policy Database: Introducing a Quantified Library of China’s Energy PoliciesGovernment policy is a critical factor in the understanding of energy markets. Governments create constraints and incentives that drive behavior through policy. In turn, these behaviors have fundamental impacts on the functioning of markets. Despite the critical role of policy, it is...
29 December 2021
India’s Ambition to Achieve Net-Zero Emissions by 2070: Uncertainty and OpportunityThe special report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) on the impacts of global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius (°C) above pre-industrial levels highlighted the importance of achieving net-zero emissions or a carbon-neutral future. There has subsequently been growi...
09 May 2019
Iran Sanctions: Implications for the Oil MarketThe paper also simulates the likely impact on the global oil price of ending the waivers in four scenarios which... The analysis in the paper is based on two in-house models: the KAPSARC Toolkit for Behavioral Analysis (KTAB) and the KAPSARC Global Energy Macroeconometric Model (KGEMM).
14 December 2020
Renewables and the Future of Geopolitics: Revisiting Main Concepts of International Relations from the Lens of Renewables
The development of renewable energy is often treated as a purely positive outcome for the world, without consideration of the challenges that come with implementation at scale, which will inevitably follow with the process of a global energy transition. Studies on the political proce...
19 October 2017
Modeling collective decision-making processes with the KAPSARC toolkit for behavioral analysisIn this article, we briefly introduce the reader to the KAPSARC Toolkit for Behavioral Analysis (KTAB). KTAB is a toolkit for building models of collective decision-making processes (CDMP), and simulating them. KTAB is being developed by the King Abdullah Petroleum Studies and Resear...
01 March 2016
Analyzing coalitions in China’s policy formulation: Reforming the role of state-owned enterprises in China’s energy sectorWe focus on the elite decision-making process in China, analyzing the formation of coalitions around particular policy options. We apply a framework that simulates collective decision-making processes (CDMP): the KAPSARC Toolkit for Behavioral Analysis (KTAB). KTAB facilitates the ap...
31 May 2017
Toward the Integration of Policymaking Models and Economic ModelsThe traditional economic approach to policy analysis is to utilize tools and methods developed within the field of economics and study the economic impact of one or more policies solely from an economic perspective. As a consequence, the “policies” are usually formulated and evaluate...