Alena Miftakhova is a Scientist in Energy Economics in the Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis since November 2025. She holds a PhD from the University of Zurich with a focus on the economics of climate change. Her research informs policymakers on the socio-economic implications of climate and energy policies. She led projects funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy on modelling the policies that aim to allow the Swiss economy to reach the Net-Zero carbon emissions target. Throughout her work, she advocates thorough and up-to-date representation of economic processes and growth in integrated assessment. At PSI, her research aims at aligning the representations of economic and energy systems in joint modeling frameworks for consistent policy inference and decision-making support. Alena is a part of ACHIEVE project, which analyzes possible solutions for hard-to-abate CO2 emissions in Switzerland.
Publications:
Boosting Sluggish Climate Policy: Endogenous Substitution, Learning, and Energy Efficiency Improvements (2025), with Bretschger, L., Leuthard, M.; Environmental and Resource Economics 88, 3905–3947. doi:10.1007/s10640-025-01046-1
How Constant is Constant Elasticity of Substitution? Endogenous Substitution between Clean and Dirty Energy (2024), with Jo, A.; Journal of Environmental Economics and Management doi:10.1016/j .jeem.2024.102982
Global sensitivity analysis for optimal climate policies: finding what truly matters (2021) Economic Modelling, 105. doi:10.1016/j.econmod.2021.105653
Statistical approximation of high-dimensional climate models (2020) with Judd, K. L., Lontzek, T. S., Schmedders, K.; Journal of Econometrics, 214(1), 67-80. doi:10.1016/j.jeconom.2019.05.005
Computing Economic Equilibria Using Projection Methods (2020) with Schmedders, K., Schumacher, M. Annual Review of Economics, 12(1) 317-353. doi:10.1146/annurev-economics-080218-025711
Affiliations:
11/2025 – present Scientist in Energy Economics, Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis, PSI, Switzerland
01/2024 – 10/2025 Postdoctoral Researcher in Energy and Climate Economics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
09/2019 – 12/2023 Postdoctoral Researcher in Economics/Resource Economics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Academic Qualifications:
Ph.D. in Economics of Climate Change, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Master of Arts in Management and Economics, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Bachelor of Arts in Economics at Saint-Petersburg State University of Engineering and Economics