Environment & Climate Change

158 Items

Three tall smokestacks emit plumes of steam and emissions

Public Domain/National Park Service

Policy Brief - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

Comparative State Economic Interventions in the Carbon Capture and Storage Market

    Authors:
  • Dillon W. Smith
  • Umang Bhattarai
  • Wake Smith
| September 2022

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.

Wind Turbines and sailboats

Wikimedia CC/ http://www.cgpgrey.com

News - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

Danish Climate Minister Lauds European Countries Vowing to Reduce their Dependency on Russian Gas During HPCA Virtual Forum

    Author:
  • Doug Gavel
| Apr. 11, 2022

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. 

Electricians install solar panels.

AP/Mary Altaffer

Report Chapter - Brookings Institution

Mexico’s Energy Reforms: A Blow to Realizing the Most Competitive and Dynamic Region in the World

| Feb. 28, 2022

In late 2017, Mexico made headlines as Italian company Enel bid what was then a world-record low price for renewable energy in the country’s third such energy auction. This development was possible due to the historical and sweeping energy reforms passed with broad support in Mexico in 2013. Then-President Enrique Peña Nieto had succeeded where previous Mexican presidents had failed, reversing decades of resource nationalism and overhauling the energy sector through constitutional reforms that gave the private sector a larger role and advantaged renewable energy in Mexico’s economy. The 2017 auction seemed to indicate Mexico’s bright future not only as a conventional oil producer, but also as a clean energy power.

Wind Turbines

Public Domain/kallerna

Journal Article - Review of Environmental Economics and Policy

The Relative Merits of Carbon Pricing Instruments: Taxes versus Trading

| Winter 2022

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.

Robert Stavins

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

Newspaper Article - Harvard Gazette

Separating Signal from Noise at COP26

    Author:
  • Alvin Powell
| Nov. 17, 2021

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. 

A container ship of the shipping line Hamburg Süd passing under the Golden Gate Bridge

Wikimedia CC/Frank Schulenburg

Analysis & Opinions - Resources Magazine

A Solution to the Competitiveness Risks of Climate Policy: Countervailing Duty Law

| Oct. 05, 2021

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.