Europe

The Harvard Project participates in a major Harvard initiative aimed at reducing emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Participating researchers represent a range of academic disciplines and Harvard schools.

The economist and HKS professor is passionate about solving what may be humanity's most important and perplexing problem: How to untangle fossil fuels from the global economy.

The authors explore an essential element in the portfolio of climate solutions required to rapidly achieve net zero emissions — flue gas carbon capture and storage, whereby carbon can be sifted from emission streams before it enters the atmosphere and safely sequestered in geologic storage systems.

The post-pandemic demand for energy combined with the war in Ukraine and subsequent gas shortages have created a global energy crisis. That is the assessment offered by renowned global energy expert Daniel Yergin in the latest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program,” a podcast produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.

The Danish Minister of Climate, Energy, and Utilities expressed his hope that the tragic war in Ukraine will help accelerate the clean energy transformation by weaning Europe off Russian gas during a Virtual Forum (view recording here) last Friday (April 8). The event was hosted by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements (HPCA) and moderated by Robert Stavins, HPCA Director and A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development. 

Orley Ashenfelter, the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics at Princeton University, outlined both the positive and negative impacts of climate change on grape growing and the wine industry in the latest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program."

Robert Stavins closely examines the advantages and disadvantages of two distinct pricing instruments for reducing carbon emissions—carbon taxes and cap-and-trade. Both policy instruments are in common use today in many countries although not in the United States. Stavins looks at the practical challenges, financial implications, and political feasibility of both approaches, concluding that while they are equivalent in many ways, they can perform quite differently along other dimensions, making an apples-to-apples comparison quite difficult.

For an assessment of what was done, and left undone, at the recent United Nations’ Conference of the Parties on climate change, the Gazette spoke with Rob Stavins, the Harvard Kennedy School’s A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development and head of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, who attended his first COP in 2007 in Bali. 

Joseph Aldy describes how the United States can work toward its ambitious climate goals and ensure a level playing field for U.S. businesses by using countervailing duties under international trade law, without the need for new legislation.

The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements and the Centre for European Studies and Comparative Politics (CEE) at Sciences Po Paris co-sponsored a workshop on March 16, 2021: “Prospects for Carbon Pricing in Europe and the United States.” U.S. participants included Harvard faculty members, as well as colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Environmental Defense Fund. European participants were based in Science Po’s CEE and French Economic Observatory, joined by an affiliate at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics. Participants represented the disciplinary perspectives of both economics and political science.