Anshuman Sahoo

Anshuman (Ansu) Sahoo is a Research Associate at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Research Fellow of the Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance at Stanford University. In his research, Ansu uses economic theory, econometrics, and the tools of operations research to address issues related to energy and environmental technology. Specifically, he develops and applies methods to study the cost-effectiveness of alternative carbon mitigation strategies and policies to support them.

This work encompasses two streams. One track examines the behavior of firms and primarily constructs cost models and metrics to predict competitiveness. His recent research in this area spans the upstream and downstream components of the renewable energy supply chain. One of his recently published papers extends a metric commonly used for the evaluation of alternative electricity generation technologies, the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). The extension to the metric allows for a more "apples to apples" evaluation of investments in power generation from renewable energy sources, which is intermittent, relative to those in facilities that use incumbent energy sources and reliably generate power on demand. On the upstream side, he has built a conceptually linked model to study the pattern of cost reductions characterizing solar photovoltaic technology. The cost and price guidance that his work provides has informed the duration and size of public support available to solar power generators. In his other research stream, Ansu builds choice models to investigate consumer behavior and demand dynamics. His study of consumers responses to the Energy Star eco-label identified a class of costs that must be included in any assessment of policies based on the concepts of behavioral economics. This work won the Best Student Paper Award at the Rome conference of the International Association for Energy Economics.

Ansu was previously a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group, where he worked on projects in the private equity, industrial goods, and energy sectors, and an intern and consulting energy economist for the Asian Development Bank. He holds a Ph.D. in Management Science and Engineering and an M.S. in Statistics from Stanford University. He also earned a B.S.E. in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University. In his spare time, he enjoys running, exploring the beauty of the Sierra Nevada, and discovering new parts of San Francisco.