Academics from Mexico and Guatemala Won the ECLAC "Fernando Cuevas" Prize

(23 March 2011) Experts from the Mexican Centre for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE) and the Rafael Landívar University in Guatemala won the first Fernando Cuevas Energy Essay Prize 2010-2011, organized by the subregional headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in Mexico.

The prize for the main authors is to have their costs covered when they take part in the third Latin American Meeting on Energy Economics (ELAEE), which will be held on 18 and 19 April in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and where they can present their work.

The meeting is being organized by the "General Mosconi" Argentine Institute of Energy, the "Francisco Valsecchi" School of Economics of the Catholic University of Argentina and the International Association for Energy Economics (IAEE).

The ECLAC competition was launched on the 8 November 2010 and is targeted at professionals and researchers specialized in the energy sector of Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.

Miriam Grunstein, professor at CIDE, won for her essay on State Monopolies and Climate Change Policy in Mexico - Bastions of Change or Strategic Barriers?, which analyses the obstacles that public monopolies place in the way of policies and targets laid down in the Strategic Climate Change Programme and the National Energy Strategy in Mexico.

Juan Pablo Castañeda, Juventino Gálvez, Renato Vargas and Héctor Tuy are researchers at the Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and the Environment (IARNA) at the Rafael Landívar University in Guatemala, and won for their work on Energy accounts as a means of assessing sectoral efficiency in the Central American region.

This essay analyses the possibilities and benefits of using energy accounts in developing countries as a complement to traditional energy statistics and evaluations. 

In order to enter the competition, entrants had to send an abstract of no more than 250 words. Out of the 51 proposals received, 29 were selected by the jury to be developed into full research studies. The shortlist included the two winning studies.

"We must mention the good quality of the work received, as well as the originality of the two winning studies", stated Víctor Hugo Ventura, Head of the Energy and Natural Resources Unit of the ECLAC subregional headquarters in Mexico and jury member.  Other jury members were Hugo Altomonte, Director of the ECLAC Natural Resources and Infrastructure Division, and Gerardo Rabinovich, a highly experienced regional expert.

Besides the two winning studies, this year there are plans to publish a selection of the best essays submitted to the competition.

The "Fernando Cuevas Energy Essay Prize" was created to honour the man who was Head of the Energy and Natural Resources Unit of the ECLAC subregional headquarters in Mexico for 16 years. He was born in Managua in 1949 and died in Mexico City in 2009. Mr. Cuevas promoted the institutional and energy integration in Central America and also stimulated the study of the ties between energy sector and climate change.

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Email: dpisantiago@cepal.org; telephone: (56-2) 210-2040/2149.