Macatangay, Rafael

Dr Macatangay is an energy sector specialist with professional experience in North America, Western Europe, and the Asia Pacific. Previous to CEPMLP, he was Manager, Transaction and Market Analysis at NV Energy Inc. (“NVE”), the utility holding company serving the State of Nevada in the US. At NVE he led a team of quantitative specialists structuring physical and financial instruments for electric power and natural gas, and provided oral and written expert testimony in Nevada regulatory proceedings. Previous to NVE, he was a Vice President at Economists Incorporated (“EI”), a specialist consulting firm with offices in California and Washington DC. At EI he provided oral and written expert testimony in Federal court proceedings, and delivered both expert reports and technical workshops in Hawaii regulatory proceedings.

Earlier in his career, he worked on nodal price simulation and asset valuation at California software firm LCG Consulting, the creator of the UPLAN optimisation model for electric power markets, and held senior positions at the Center for Research and Communication (“CRC”), a think-tank now known as University of Asia and the Pacific in Manila, the Philippines. At LCG he delivered analytical work products to the Electric Power Research Institute, the Balancing Pool of Alberta in Canada, San Diego Gas & Electric, Alliant Energy Resources Inc., Taiwan Power, BC Hydro in Canada, US law firm Hennigan, Bennet & Doreman, and EPCOR in Canada. At CRC he prepared energy sector reports for the World Bank, the Japan External Trade Organization, international energy companies, and Philippine government agencies.

Dr Macatangay has a PhD from the University of Manchester, UK and was a Visiting Research Associate at the University of California Energy Institute in Berkeley for his post-doctoral work. He is a US citizen and has indefinite leave to remain status in the UK.

Dr Macatangay is a specialist in electric power, natural gas, and related energy commodities, with emphasis on the law and economics of the energy transition. His interdisciplinary research is on the cognate areas of risk management, competition and regulation, and natural resource policy. He is keen on numerical methods implemented in specialist software, and on qualitative approaches auditing the alignment between theory and decision-making. His work has received funding from the UK Economic and Social Research Council, the UK Department for International Development, the Energy Technology Partnership in Scotland, and the African Center for Economic Transformation in Accra. He has conducted research in collaboration with academics from the UK, China, and Africa.

Dr Macatangay is a member of the International Association for Energy Economics (“IAEE”). He has had academic visits with the MIT Energy Laboratory, the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, the Stanford University Economics Department, Resources for the Future, the World Bank, the IMF, and the Environmental Defense Fund in New York. He has provided advisory for governments, development agencies, energy companies, investment houses, and professional services firms. He recently engaged in knowledge exchange on US natural gas markets for nearly two person-months at the Oxford office of a London investment firm (with about $30B under management and hundreds of employees in offices worldwide).

Dr Macatangay has supervised PhD students working on the optimisation of electricity market structures in Indonesia, supply risk and strategic behaviour in global natural gas markets, the economic benefits of electricity market integration in East Africa, capacity markets in the UK, and social accounting and conflict resolution in the mining industry. He has also supervised MSc students working on a wide range of topics, including the energy transition, energy security, hedging instruments for energy commodities, liquidity and price discovery in energy markets, economic signals for investments in electricity generation or transmission, the optimisation of natural gas pipeline capacity, competition in electricity markets, privatisation and liberalisation of energy markets, regulatory capture, road pricing, and local content requirement policies for extractive industries.

Dr Macatangay would be delighted to provide supervision for PhD students whose interests are related to his research activities.

Dr Macatangay teaches three 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 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.

CP52002 Contemporary Issues in Energy Economics 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.