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Coal-fired power plant near Lake Michigan

News - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, Belfer Center

Responses to the EPA Clean Power Plan

| August 4, 2015

On August 3, 2015, President Barack Obama and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy released the final version of the Clean Power Plan (CPP). The CPP's goal is to reduce emissions of CO2 in the United States by 32 percent in 2030, relative to 2005 emissions. See earlier analysis of the CPP by Harvard faculty members and other Harvard-Project affiliates here and here and reaction to the final version by faculty affiliated with the Harvard Law School Environmental Law Program.

May 24, 2006: Brooktrout Lake near Speculator, N.Y. in the Adirondacks. Brooktrout Lake was once a "dead" lake devastated by acid rain and is now a symbol of nature's ability to heal itself once pollutants are curbed.

AP Photo

Report - Harvard Environmental Economics Program

The SO2 Allowance Trading System and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990: Reflections on Twenty Years of Policy Innovation

| January 2012

The introduction of the U.S. SO2 allowance-trading program to address the threat of acid rain as part of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 is a landmark event in the history of environmental regulation. The program was a great success by almost all measures. Ironically, cap and trade seems especially well suited to addressing the problem of climate change, in that emitted greenhouse gases are evenly distributed throughout the world's atmosphere. Recent hostility toward cap and trade in debates about U.S. climate legislation may reflect the broader political environment of the climate debate more than the substantive merits of market-based regulation.

Mohammed Reza Salamat, UN Secretary-General’s Climate Change Support Team; Scott Barrett, Columbia University; Warren Hoge, Vice President for External Relations, International Peace Institute; and Robert Stavins.

Photo by Don Pollard

Announcement

Robert Stavins Conducts Seminar at International Peace Institute in New York

| June 2010

Robert Stavins, Director of the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements conducted a seminar hosted and organized by the International Peace Institute in New York City on June 21, 2010. His talk, entitled "Climate Change Policy after Copenhagen," addressed the outcomes of COP-15 in Copenhagen, the institutional context of international climate policy, and prospects for domestic climate policy in the United States.

Executive orders await the signature of President Barack Obama, not pictured, as he speaks about jobs, energy independence, and climate change, Jan. 26, 2009, in the East Room of the White House.

AP Photo

Announcement

Harvard Project Participants Join Obama Administration

| June 16, 2009

A number of individuals associated with the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements have received appointments in the administration of President Barack Obama. The Project's former Co-Director, Joseph Aldy, is now Special Assistant to the President for Energy and the Environment, reporting to Carol Browner and Lawrence Summers. (Ms. Browner is Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change.) Professor Summers (on leave from Harvard) himself was a member of the Harvard Project's Faculty Steering Committee before becoming Director of the National Economic Council in the White House and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. Jody Freeman, also a former member of the Harvard Project's Faculty Steering Committee and a Harvard Law School Professor (on leave of absence), is now Counselor for Energy and Climate in the White House, reporting to Carol Browner.