The Belfer Center’s Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Center for Science, Technology, and Education Policy at Tsinghua University held the fifth annual Tsinghua-Harvard Workshop on Low-Carbon Development and Public Policy. This event brought together leading experts on climate and energy from academic, business, and government communities in both the United States and China. This year’s workshop focused on electricity systems and renewable energy penetration.

The Harvard-Tsinghua Workshop on Low-Carbon Development and Public Policy is the fourth annual joint workshop between the Harvard Kennedy School’s Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Center for Science, Technology, and Education Policy at Tsinghua University. The workshop convened leading experts on climate and energy from the United States and China at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, on June 1-2, 2017.

The workshop was divided into five sessions. The first two sessions focused on the scope of the climate problem and the options for addressing it. The following three sessions explored specific options: renewable energy, nuclear power, and air pollution regulation.

The transition from President Obama to President Trump has triggered fears that the new administration will overturn many of the policies, programs and successes of the last eight years. These fears are especially strong concerning the issue of climate change.

While the policies of the new White House are still unclear, President Trump has appointed a number of people who have opposed the climate initiatives and, in some cases, expressed skepticism that the human induced climate threat even exists.

The concern in many circles is that the administration will walk away from the Paris Agreement and repudiate the ambitious emission reduction targets set out in the U.S.-China bilateral agreement signed by Presidents Obama and Xi Jinping in November 2014.

The Harvard-Tsinghua Workshop on Low-Carbon Development and Public Policy is the third annual joint workshop between the Harvard Kennedy School’s Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Sustainability Science Program and the Center for Science, Technology, and Education Policy at Tsinghua University. The workshop convened prominent members of the academic and policy communities from China and the United States at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, on June 2-3, 2016.

The three closed sessions were on: 1) Market Mechanisms to Reduce Carbon Emissions, 2) Role of Local Government in Low-Carbon Development, and 3) Energy Technology Innovation in the Transportation Sector.

Environmental conservation programs in China have increasingly emphasized integration of marketbased logic into regulatory programs. But the realization of market logic and the effectiveness of such efforts are widely questioned by scientists and policy analysts. The authors empirically analyze the design, implementation, and outcomes of the ecological restoration program in the Three-Rivers Headwater Region in China, a large-scale conservation scheme aimed at restoring degraded grasslands and improving local livelihoods.