Harvard Project Participants Join Obama Administration

A number of individuals associated with the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements have received appointments in the administration of President Barack Obama. The Project's former Co-Director, Joseph Aldy, is now Special Assistant to the President for Energy and the Environment, reporting to Carol Browner and Lawrence Summers. (Ms. Browner is Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change.) Professor Summers (on leave from Harvard) himself was a member of the Harvard Project's Faculty Steering Committee before becoming Director of the National Economic Council in the White House and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. Jody Freeman, also a former member of the Harvard Project's Faculty Steering Committee and a Harvard Law School Professor (on leave of absence), is now Counselor for Energy and Climate in the White House, reporting to Carol Browner.

Several Harvard Project Discussion Paper authors have received appointments in the Obama Administration. (These discussion papers will be published in a volume edited by Aldy and Project Director Robert Stavins, with the title of Post-Kyoto International Climate Policy: Implementing Architectures for Agreement, in fall 2009.) Cass Sunstein, another Harvard Law School professor (on leave) has been nominated by the President to be Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the White House Office of Management and Budget. William (Billy) Pizer is Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Environment and Energy. Other Harvard Project authors working on climate change policy in Dr. Pizer's office are Judson Jaffe and Daniel Hall. Finally, Richard Newell has been nominated as Administrator of the Energy Information Administration in the Department of Energy.

Aldy, Newell, and Pizer all received Ph.D.s from Harvard and were Pre-Doctoral Fellows with the affiliated Harvard Environmental Economics Program