Barry Posner

Hello, my name is Barry Posner, and I am one of the instructors for the online delivery of EBF 200.

I have been involved in the energy industries, in one way or another, for about 40 years. This began when I became an oilfield brat in my tweens, allowing me to live in several countries before graduating high school. After finishing high school, I spent a few years doing blue-collar work in the oilfields of central Alberta, where my parents settled. Tiring of this, I went to university, and obtained my bachelor's degree (chemical engineering) and master's degree (mining engineering) from the University of Alberta. I worked in several energy-related industries - oil and gas production, gas transmission and distribution, petrochemicals and refining, and finished my engineering career designing pipelines for an international consultant serving the mining industry.

Finding my engineering work to be rather repetitive, I decided to change gears, and enrolled a doctoral program in the old Energy, Environmental and Mineral Economics program at Penn State. After four years, I took a job teaching economics to engineering students in Abu Dhabi, and in 2006, I completed my doctorate, being the very last student to graduate from Mineral Economics at Penn State before the program was phased out. It is during this time that I first encountered an early iteration of this course, developed and taught by Dr. Kleit, my dissertation supervisor and the director of the Energy Business and Finance program.

After three years in the Middle East, I returned to the US, and worked several years for a pair of large electricity generation companies: Exelon in Kennett Square, PA, and NRG Energy in Princeton, NJ. In 2012, I joined Wood Mackenzie, a global energy and metals industry consulting and research firm, and I currently work in Houston as a member of our North America Gas Service team.

This course will be conducted entirely online. There are no set class meeting times, but you will be required to complete weekly assignments. Registered students in this course will need to navigate between several environments. These include:

This site

The instructional materials in this site include lessons, plus the Orientation. Each lesson contains an introduction, reading assignments, links, assessments, etc.

Canvas [1]

Canvas is the learning management system currently being used by Penn State University. In Canvas, registered students may consult course calendars; communicate with instructors, teaching assistants, and fellow students; submit assignments; receive feedback from the instructor and teaching assistant; take online quizzes and surveys; and check assignment scores and course grades. A link to Canvas appears on every page.

NOTE: Only students who are registered for this course will have access to the Canvas space for this course. Students who register for this Penn State course gain access to assignments and instructor feedback and earn academic credit. Information about this course and the Online Bachelor of Arts Degree in Energy & Sustainability Policy.

Topics of study

• Lesson 1—Thinking about economics
  • What is economics and why study it?
  • Individual rationality and the economic way of thinking
  • Positive and normative questions; property rights
• Lesson 2—Markets: Demand
  • Market structures; comparative advantage and trade
  • Supply and demand; origin of the demand curve
  • Elasticities and demand curve shapes
• Lesson 3—Markets: Supply
  • Production functions
  • Cost structures
  • Short and long run; investment decisions
• Lesson 4—Market dynamics
  • Wealth created by markets
  • Demand curve movements: causes and effects
  • Supply curve movements: causes and effects
• Lesson 5—Market power
  • Perfectly competitive market
  • Market power and monopoly
  • Other forms of market power
• Lesson 6—Other market failures
  • Barriers to entry
  • Price discrimination
  • Information market failure
• Lesson 7—Environmental economics
  • Public goods and common pools
  • Externalities
  • Valuing environmental goods
• Lesson 8—Government failure
  • Public choice theory
  • Bureaucracies and power
  • Rent-seeking and regulatory capture
• Lesson 9—Government intervention
  • Approaches to addressing monopoly
  • Price controls and their effects
  • Trade controls and their effects
• Lesson 10—Topical issues: Climate change and carbon policy
  • The economics of climate change
  • Climate change controversies
  • Reducing carbon emissions
• Lesson 11—Topical issues: Resource scarcity and energy security
  • Resource scarcity
  • Energy security and independence
  • Replacing oil
• Lesson 12—Topical issues: Effects of the shale gas boom
  • ​Shale gas production
  • Gas and power market effects
  • Trade effects

Please look under the syllabus for your instructor to find details about the assignments.

Gradebook

You will find the course gradebook by clicking on the Grades tab in Canvas.

Turning In Assignments

On quizzes, exercises, or other things handed in, please check your answers before you submit them electronically. Materials submitted online are graded in the same way as any other course submissions--we grade what you submit. If the answer is D but you chose C, the answer is wrong...whether you accidentally wrote C by hand, or you accidentally colored in the C circle on the scantron sheet with your #2 pencil, or you accidentally clicked on C with your mouse.

Computer Connections

You are responsible for your computer connection. If you were driving to campus to take an in-class exam, the instructor would not come out to get you if your car broke down. If you are taking an online quiz and your apartment's wireless goes down, the situation is the same. Thus, you should find a good, solid connection. We let you "drop" two quizzes, one mid-term, and two one-minute exams when calculating your grade, and this should cover an occasional electronic disaster on your end.

OK, this is the part of the introduction where I have to be a bit firm. Hopefully, after saying these things once, I won't have to say them again, and if that's the case, we'll all be happier.

Your responsibilities

This course, as delivered through the Penn State World Campus, is a distance education course. I understand that many of you may be resident students at the University Park campus or one of the other Penn State campuses. However, as a distance education course, you cannot treat this course the same way you would treat a regular, in vivo course. This is more of an independent learning experience. This isn't strictly a correspondence course - I am here to answer any questions, address issues you may have, participate in the discussion forums, and so on.

But, I will reiterate, this is largely an independent learning experience. As such, there are certain responsibilities that fall upon you.

1. You must make yourself familiar with the time-lines of the course and the timing of the assignments. Quizzes, exams and mid-terms are open only for a limited amount of time. If you do not take the assessments in the prescribed window of time, you will not be able to do so afterwards.
2. By committing to take an online course, you are committing to having sufficient Internet access to be able to take this course without significant interruption. If you know that you are going to be spending a lot of weekends at your parents' cabin, where there is no Internet, then perhaps you should not be taking this course. Not having access to the Internet is not a valid excuse for missing assignments. So, please don't tell me that you couldn't take a quiz because you didn't have Internet access.
3. If you have a valid reason for not taking a quiz, such as hospitalization or bereavement, please let me know as soon as possible. It is always easier for us to plan around such eventualities in advance.
4. Pay attention to your in-box. We will be sending you e-mail messages frequently. I will be making announcements, reminding you of upcoming assignments, giving you exam results, and so on. All messages from course staff will begin with the prefix "EBF 200." I strongly suggest that you set up your PSU mail account to automatically forward to another account, such as Hotmail or Gmail, if you use such an account regularly. Once again, telling me you didn't get an e-mail is not an excuse for missing an assignment. If I send an e-mail, I assume that you received it. If you go for more than a week without getting an e-mail from me or another course administrator, please contact me and find out if something is wrong with your account.
5. Extra credit: please do not e-mail me in the last week of the course (or any other time) and ask me if "there is anything I can do to improve my grade". We will have a small amount of extra credit available related to the short answer questions. There will be no other extra credit opportunities. Don't ask, because I will say no, and I don't like saying no, and you probably don't like being told no. So, everybody is better off if you don't ask. If you do, I'll probably send you a link to this page and ask you to re-read clause #5.
6. Discussion forums. In Canvas you will find a discussion forum for asking questions about material covered in this course. I will try to address your questions in a timely manner, but I also expect each of you to assist your fellow students if you can, and to do so in a helpful and supportive manner. The discussion forum is not a place to complain about the course, or me, or the quizzes, or how ridiculous you find some of the content, or how some question wasn't fair.
7. Tracking grades. Your marks from weekly quizzes and exams should show up in the Canvas gradebook a few days after assessment closes, as either I or the course teaching assistant have to read and manually grade them. If they do not show up, let me know as soon as possible.

My responsibilities

My primary responsibility throughout the duration of the course will be responding to questions you may have, either via the email interface in Canvas or via the discussion forums. As mentioned above, all course communications forward automatically to me, so I will see everything pretty much instantly. If something is urgent, I will strive to address it as soon as possible. If it is a request that is not urgent, but cogent and meaningful, I will strive to address it within a day or two. If I am going to be out of communication for a day or two, I'll let you know so that you can expect a bit of a delay. I don't expect this to happen too often, but if it does, I will get on it as soon as possible.

OK, I think that's all for now, although I will reserve the right to add to this page as other things arise.

Now that you've had a chance to learn about the course and the online learning environment, I'd like to get to know you...and help you get to know each other! Complete the activities below, then continue with the remainder of the Course Orientation.

Activity

By now, you hopefully have a much better idea of what this course, and the online course environment, will be like. Time to test your skills! Once you have reviewed all of the materials for the Course Orientation, you will need to take the "Course Information Quiz" and pass it with a score of 90% or better in order to unlock the assignment dropboxes for this course. You can take the quiz as many times as you need until you obtain at least a 90%.

1. Take the Course Orientation Quiz!
   • Go to Canvas.
   • Click on the Modules tab.
   • Click on the link to the "Course Orientation—Course Information Quiz" and complete the quiz.
2. Complete the "Initial Course Survey"
   This survey contains questions about you and your expectations for this course. You will NOT be graded on the correctness of your answers to the content questions. However, participating in this survey is considered in your final course grade. To access the Initial Course Survey:
   • Go to Canvas.
   • Click on the Modules tab.
   • Click on the link to the "Course Orientation—Initial Course Survey" and complete the survey.
3. Introduce yourself and meet the rest of the class!
   We will use a discussion forum in Canvas to post, and read, self-introductions. To access the discussion forum:
   • Go to Canvas.
   • Click on the Modules tab.
   • Click on the link to the "Course Orientation—Personal Introductions" discussion forum.
   • Post a new message containing your personal introduction:
     • Who are you?
     • What do you do when you are not taking this class?
     • What is your interest in this course?
     • Anything else interesting about yourself you'd like us to know?
   • View other students' postings to learn more about them.
   Need more help using discussion forums? Review the Canvas discussion forum directions [2].

You have reached the end of the Course Orientation! Double-check the to-do list on the Course Orientation Getting to Know You [3] page to make sure you have completed all of the activities listed there before you begin Lesson 1. (To access Lesson 1, use the link in the "Lessons" menu.)