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As assistant to the president for science and technology, director of the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy, and co-chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), Holdren has worked closely with Obama to reinvigorate America’s scientific capabilities on a range of policy fronts, from climate change and renewable energy to health care and nanotechnology.

Senior Fellow of the Future of Diplomacy Project, David Ignatius examines the Navy’s energy diet that began seven years ago with an edict from newly appointed Secretary Ray Mabus, who issued five goals for radically changing how the Navy bought and consumed fuel.

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.

Released to the public in early May, the 2014 National Climate Assessment brought to light some of the greatest and most dismaying threats to humanity. In his Harvard Kennedy School “IDEASpHERE” session titled “Sustainable Prosperity on a Crowded Planet,” William Clark talked about these threats, possible solutions, and re-thinking how we approach the topic of sustainability.

Planting a forest to improve air quality may prove to be as cost-effective as expensive new pollution control equipment, according to preliminary results from a novel experiment at a Freeport, Texas chemical plant. Officials involved in the study say this innovative approach could become a test case before the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which has identified reforestation as a potential air quality improvement strategy.

Leaders of an unusual collaboration between The Nature Conservancy, the world's largest conservation group, and the Dow Chemical Company, a Fortune 100 corporation, told a Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) audience this week that they were encouraged by initial findings validating a dollars-and-cents approach to valuing nature that may help businesses with their bottom line while improving the environment in local communities.

The Roy Family Summer Environmental Internship supports returning Kennedy School students interested in specific internships for public, private, or non-profit organizations abroad or in the United States.  These paid scholarships allow students to participate in innovative summer projects that would ordinarily not offer a salary.  There are four award recipients for 2012, and each received a $6,500 stipend to work with organizations that are not able to hire an intern.

The U.S. government could save the economy hundreds of billions of dollars per year by 2050 by spending a few billion dollars more a year to spur innovations in energy technology, according to a new report by researchers at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The three-year project by the Belfer Center's Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group calls for doubling investment and adopting policy changes in energy technology.