Events

An Australian Research Council Project, Community Sponsorship for Refugee Resettlement is holding a Colloquium on “The Context and Background to ‘Community Sponsorship’ in Australia: Refugees and Humanitarian Entrants”.

This interactive session will broadly respond to the question: “How did Australia’s current approach to community sponsorship of refugees evolve within the Special Humanitarian Program (SHP) for refugees and humanitarian entrants?” Speakers will include Professors Michelle Foster (Dean of the Melbourne Law School) and Susan Kneebone, as well as other experts in the field.

We are very pleased to extend an invitation to young scholars and students who are interested in this issue to attend the Colloquium.

Melbourne Energy Institute - Public lecture / Hybrid event

The Melbourne Energy Institute invites you to a public lecture by Associate Professor Chiara Lo Prete from Pennsylvania State University.

Over the past decade, cold weather events such as the 2014 Polar Vortex and Winter Storm Uri caused widespread power outages, driven in part by fuel supply interruptions at gas-fired power plants. These interruptions are especially acute in the Northeastern U.S., where pipeline constraints during peak heating demand periods limit gas deliveries to power plants. During such periods, residential and commercial customers are prioritized over other customers holding firm gas transportation contracts. Additionally, federal regulations mandate non-discriminatory access to pipeline capacity among firm contract holders, placing power plants and industrial customers at the same priority level. This paper explores an alternative strategy to improve gas allocation efficiency within existing infrastructure. Specifically, we examine advance exchange agreements in which industrial customers voluntarily release firm gas transportation capacity to power plants in exchange for monetary compensation during winter emergencies. To evaluate this option, we develop an optimization model that accounts for competing gas uses across sectors, transportation contract types, and emergency curtailment priorities. The model is applied to a realistic gas-electric system that represents the Northeastern U.S. during the 2014 Polar Vortex, leveraging a novel dataset on gas deliveries by sector and contract type. Results indicate that advance exchange agreements between end users reduce system costs and unserved electric energy, but do not fully resolve reliability challenges because only a small fraction of gas can be reallocated from industrial customers with fuel-switching capabilities to nearby power plants.