Macatangay, Rafael

Dr Rafael Emmanuel Macatangay PhD is a Regulatory Economist at the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada (“PUCN”) since 2021. He has experience providing oral and written testimony at proceedings of the PUCN and the US Court of Federal Claims in Washington DC.

Prior to the PUCN, he served as tenured Lecturer in Energy Economics (Assistant Professor) at the Centre for Energy, Petroleum and Mineral Law and Policy (“CEPMLP”), University of Dundee, Scotland UK. At CEPMLP he conducted academic investigations as part of funded research projects; taught postgraduate modules on the electric power sector, numerical methods (including statistics and optimisation), energy commodity trading, real options analysis, and contemporary energy issues; offered advisory on US natural gas markets to a major asset manager; and supervised MSc and PhD students examining a variety of topics related to energy markets and natural resources globally.

Prior to CEPMLP, he provided leadership of analytical teams on the trading floor of NV Energy Inc. in Las Vegas, Nevada; and delivered litigation support at the California and Washington DC offices of boutique consulting firm Economists Incorporated (now Secretariat Economists). Early in his career, he prepared analytical work products at the Los Altos, California office of LCG Consulting, an international software company producing energy market optimisation tools; and at the San Francisco, California office of Deloitte and Touche LLP, a global consulting firm. He has worked on consulting projects for private and public sector entities as well as international development agencies.

He wrote a PhD thesis on electricity markets in England and Wales at the University of Manchester, UK and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California Energy Institute, Berkeley. His research has been published in academic journals, scholarly book chapters, and trade periodicals. He has given presentations at numerous conferences, seminars, and meetings in the US, Western Europe, and the Asia Pacific.

He strives to maintain an academic interest in electric power, natural gas, water, and related commodities across the cognate areas of risk management, competition and regulation, and natural resource policy. In 2022, he was conferred two honorary appointments: Visiting Professor at Durham Law School, Durham University, UK; and Honorary Lecturer at CEPMLP (at which he teaches a postgraduate module on the electric power sector and supervises a PhD student evaluating the law and economics of renewable energy contracts in different countries).

His research has been published in Economics of Energy and Environmental Policy, Energy Policy, Electricity Journal, Resources Policy, Utilities Policy, European Journal of Law and Economics, International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Global Energy Law and Sustainability, Journal of the Asia Pacific Economy, IEEE Proceedings, and periodicals of the American Bar Association. A book chapter he co-authored with Durham University Law School Dean Prof Volker Roeben, “Managing the threat of regulatory capture under the European Energy Union,” was included in the 2021 REF submission of the University of Dundee. A journal article he co-authored with Northumbria Law School Prof Alistair Rieu-Clarke, “The role of valuation and bargaining in optimising transboundary watercourse treaty regimes,” was included in the 2021 REF submission of the University of Northumbria.

At CEPMLP he conducted research projects funded by the UK Department for International Development, the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the Energy Technology Partnership (Scotland), and the African Center for Economic Transformation (Accra). He provided advisory on US natural gas markets at the Oxford office of a London investment firm managing tens of billions of US dollars. He supervised PhD students doing research on the optimisation of electricity market structures, supply risk and strategic behaviour in global natural gas markets, the economic benefits of electricity market integration, electricity capacity markets, and social accounting and conflict resolution in the mining industry. He supervised MSc students doing research on a wide variety of topics related to energy markets and natural resources.

He teaches contextualised postgraduate modules using the lens of law and economics to examine the energy transition. Each of them features hands-on exercises using statistical, optimisation, or simulation models.

CP52071 Economics of Electric Power covers scheduling, balancing, despatching renewable energy, transmission congestion and nodal pricing, fuel markets (especially natural gas), risk management (in particular, hedge design), economic regulation (with emphasis on integrated resource planning), and optimal expansion decisions.

CP51003 Analytical Tools for Energy Economics (until academic year 2020-2021) covers accounting and intensity indicators, price statistics, market model parameter calibration, optimal procurement, nodal price modelling, power plant-gas pipeline linkages, levelised cost analysis, and computable general equilibrium modelling.

CP52073 Commodity Trading & Strategic Asset Optimisation in the Energy Industry (co-taught with Dr Shawn Mu until academic year 2020-2021) covers real options, asset valuation, and portfolio optimisation.

CP52002 Contemporary Issues in Energy Economics (until academic year 2020-2021) covers "the grand energy transitions," strategic behaviour in energy markets, price formation processes (especially for oil, natural gas, and electric power), competition and regulation (including electricity market design), environmental issues (in particular, emissions trading), energy security, renewables, and investments and access.

During the pandemic, he had delivered more than a hundred hours of online sessions (i.e. lectures, computer laboratory workshops, tutorials, etc.) on the energy sector to highly diverse groups, such as CEPMLP postgraduate students, representatives of energy regulators in East Africa, and energy sector professionals from different parts of the world.