Publisert: 02.07.25

PhD position within INVESTMENT AND POLICY ANALYSIS UNDER UNCERTAINTY FOR CCS VALUE CHAINS

There is a temporary PhD position for 3 years available at the Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management – Section Managerial Economics, Finance and Operation Research. The position is resident at NTNUs campus in Trondheim. This is an educational position, which will provide promising research recruits the opportunity for professional development through studies towards a PhD-degree. The position is connected to the PhD program at the Faculty of Economics and Management and the faculty will be your employer.

The PhD position will be part of the part of the Research Centre for Carbon Capture and Storage called gigaCCS and the work focuses on topics covered by Mission Area 4 CCS value chains. More information about the centre can be found here www.gigaccs.no.

About the specific work package

The position will contribute to WP 4.1 Policy, governance, and regulations that will facilitate upscaling of CCS deployment through three activities:

• Accelerate the deployment by identifying the most suitable policies to enable the gigatonne scale.
• Identify and propose the most suitable governance strategies for the deployment of shared large-scale infrastructures.
• Mature national CO₂ storage licensing regime and regulatory aspects of cross-border CO₂ transport at the gigatonne scale.

About the position 

The process of increasing CCS volumes from the megatonnes scale of today to gigatons in the future requires policies and governance structures that make investments that happen today a steppingstone towards projects that are investable on commercial terms. One important element in that process is the management and sharing of risk among agents in the CCS value chains like CO2, suppliers, shippers, infrastructure owners, storage owners, as well as regulators and governments. Risks are related to technological maturity, volumes and CO2 prices, as well as political risk. This project will address the instruments, policy measures, regulation and market design that stimulate the best investment choices and formation of robust cooperation designs needed to allow for scaling of the value chains. 

The project requires knowledge of real options analysis, quantitative modelling skills and understanding of the CCS value chain.

The aim of the project is to:

• Develop methodologies to assess investment decisions in the CCS value chain under uncertainty.
• Develop methodologies to test different cooperation designs among stakeholders in the CCS value chain.
• Analyze how different policy measures and regulation impact investment behavior and robustness of cooperation designs among different agents in the value chain.
• Identify policies that incentivize management and sharing of risk among agents in the CCS value chains.

The workload is expected to result in 3-4 academic articles, contributing to the work of gigaCCS WP 4.1.

You will report to your supervisor, Professor Verena Hagspiel-Janssen. The position will also be co-supervised by Dr Simon Roussanaly, Research Scientist at SINTEF Energy Research

Duties of the position

• Execute a PhD project within 3 years (including formal analysis and dissemination).
• Complete the necessary doctoral coursework as per NTNU’s guidelines.
• Attend center meetings and develop a collaboration network with center partners.
• Disseminate research findings through national/international academic conferences and open access scientific journals that meet the requirements for the PhD position.

Qualification requirements

• The PhD-position's main objective is to qualify for work in research positions. The qualification requirement is completion of a master’s degree or second degree (equivalent to 120 credits) in mathematical economics, quantitative finance, energy economics, operations research, or equivalent education within the thematic areas relevant to the project. Applicants should have a strong academic background with a grade of B or better in terms of NTNU’s grading scale. Applicants with no letter grades from previous studies must have an equally good academic foundation.
• The position requires excellent English oral and writing skills.

In addition, the following qualifications will contribute positively to the evaluation of the applicant:

• Background and/or experience relevant to the project topic
• Documented experience with real options analysis, decision making under uncertainty, and/or value chain analysis.
• Documented experience with the carbon capture and storage sector

Recent graduates, or applicants who are in the final stage of their Master’s program, are encouraged to apply. Such an applicant may be offered the position under the condition that the diploma will show satisfactory final term results.

Please see more here: https://www.jobbnorge.no/ledige-stillinger/stilling/283510 

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Om IØT

Profil

Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management

IØT has challenging and inspiring educational programmes and research projects in the cross-disciplinary field of technology management. Through its programmes of study, IØT educates candidates with a solid technological basis in methodology and theory on how to develop and manage technologically based organisations.

Research

Participation in, and development of, research projects in close co-operation with Norwegian industry, the department is also developing models, tools and methods for how to manage Norwegian industry.