Harvard Project Explores Linkage at Climate-Week Event

The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements co-sponsored a symposium in New York on September 22, 2014 with the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) exploring the role of linkage in the new international climate-change agreement to be completed in Paris in December 2015. IETA is a corporate membership organization whose mission is to advance market-based mechanisms for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. The event coincided with U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's Climate Summit, held in New York on September 23, 2014—and Climate Week in New York City.

At the event, the Harvard Project released the executive summary of a research paper on linkage—not only among cap-and-trade systems, but among cap-and-trade, carbon tax, and non-market regulatory systems—and the role of linkage in the 2015 agreement.

Links to the agenda for the event and the full text of the executive summary are at the bottom of this page.

Two panels—including policy makers and business leaders respectively—discussed how linkage and carbon markets more generally can contribute to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions. Speakers included:

• Amy Ericson, U.S. President, Alstom
• David Hone, Chief Climate Change Advisor, Shell
• Nathaniel Keohane, Vice President, International Climate, Environmental Defense Fund
• Rachel Kyte, Vice President and Special Envoy for Climate Change, World Bank Group
• Hege Marie Norheim, Senior Vice President, Sustainability, Statoil

There were a number of press reports on the symposium—or elaborating on its content:

• The Harvard Gazette published an interview with Robert Stavins (from New York) here.
• Robert Stavins' and the Harvard-Project team's work was referenced in a column on the Huffington Post on September 23, 2014 by Harvard University President Drew Faust and Stanford University President John Hennessy, titled "What Universities Can Do About Climate Change"—also keyed to the Secretary-General's Climate Summit.
• Bloomberg posted a report on the symposium here, titled "Rise of Carbon Markets Drives Interest in Linking Them, Speakers on Climate Say."
• Robert Stavins published an op-ed in the New York Times the day before the event, here.

IETA and six of its member companies provided financial support for the Harvard Project’s research on linkage. These companies are: Chevron, GDF-Suez, Global CCS Institute, Rio Tinto, Shell, and TransCanada.

Photo Credit: Martyna Kurcz-Jenn, Alstom International