Peter Letmathe


Title of Presentation: OR and Corporate Environmental Management

10th Triennial Conference of the Association of Asia-Pacific Operational Research Societies

Kuching Sarawak, Malaysia

August 2015


Abstract:

Climate change from global warming is the most critical problem currently facing mankind. The deleterious effects of global warming have already been felt in 2019 in terms of storms, heatwaves and forest fires. Climate-based natural disasters in the longer term threaten to be much worse. Policies to deal with this problem must combine efforts to reduce global warming by eliminating greenhouse gas emissions with actions that adapt to worsening climate outcomes. Determining the best policy settings is a highly complex decision problem, involving complex interacting systems and markets, many stakeholders, many decision criteria, and huge uncertainty. In other words, it is a major opportunity for operations researchers.


This talk will illustrate some of the analytics challenges in planning a net-zero carbon economy with a focus on electricity systems. Models range from short-term operations (like dealing with intermittent renewable energy) to long-term investment planning to ensure security of energy supply in an uncertain future. Planning models are complemented with equilibrium models that represent the effects of risk-averse agent behaviour. The models will be illustrated with a New Zealand case study based on our recent work for the New Zealand Interim Climate Change Committee in planning a 100% renewable electricity system.


Bio

Peter Letmathe received his PhD (summa cum laude) from the University GH Essen and completed his postdoctoral stage with his Habilitation on “Flexible Standardization” at Ruhr-University Bochum. After completing his habilitation, he was appointed Professor of Environmental and Technology Management at University of Bayreuth. He held the chair of Value Chain Management with special focus on Small and Medium sized Enterprises at University of Siegen where he founded the SMI (Small and Medium Sized Enterprise Institute Siegen). Since October 2011, he has been Chair of Management Accounting at RWTH Aachen University.


His international experience includes multiple visiting professorships at the University of Colorado at Boulder and Clemson University. His practical experience comprises more than two years of work in the furniture industry as well as more than 50 projects with industrial firms mainly in the fields of strategic management, management accounting, and process optimisation. Besides having published in top business journals, he has been member of several scientific boards.In July 2013 he received the EURO award for the Best EJOR Paper 2013 (Innovative Applications of OR).