About Liz Marshall
Liz Marshall is a resource economist heading up the Biofuels Production and Policy project at the World Resources Institute. Her background is in economics and ecology; she has an M.S. in Biological Sciences, with a specialization in conservation biology, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Agricultural and Applied Economics. Her professional interests have centered on the co-evolution of the environmental and social landscapes as reflected in changing land-use patterns and impacts. To explore the potential impacts of a wide array of programs and policy on those patterns, she uses a variety of simulation models designed to reflect the complex relationships between economic and biophysical processes and how they respond to changing policy incentives.
The Biofuels Production and Policy project focuses on advancing a scientific understanding of what constitutes sustainable biofuel feedstock production and building the institutional ability to incorporate measures of those sustainability dimensions into agricultural and energy policies. The project uses a unique agro-environmental production model to explore the regional economic and environmental impacts of relying more heavily on agriculture to meet the nation’s energy needs, as well as the potential for various forms of policy to mitigate those impacts. Current analysis focuses on the domestic expansion of available ethanol and biodiesel technology as well as on projected impacts of cellulosic ethanol produced from distinct feedstocks such as corn stover and switchgrass. Liz’s research efforts also include the international trade and environmental implications of scaling up biofuels and biomass production in South America and Southeast Asia and the potential for sustainable trade and procurement policies to address those impacts.
