Science, Technology, and Public Policy

A Harvard-China Project Research Seminar with Cecilia Han Springer, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Environment and Natural Resources and Science, Technology and Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School. This event will be held in Pierce Hall, Room #100F.

Sponsored by the Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy, and Environment; Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS); and the Environment and Natural Resources Program (ENRP) at Harvard Kennedy School.

Lunch will be served.

RSVP not required, but please sign in when you arrive.

Lunch will be served.

RSVP not required, but please sign in when you arrive.

Lunch will be served.

Please note this seminar will be off-the-record.  RSVP not required, but please sign in when you arrive.

Jerson Kelman, Former Director of Brazil’s National Electricity Regulatory Agency (ANEEL) speaks at the ETIP/Consortium for Energy Policy Research energy policy seminar series.

Speaker: Yaodong Shi, Fellow, Consortium for Energy Policy Research

The ETIP/Consortium on Energy Policy seminar continues on Mondays this spring.

Speakers:Bryan Walsh, environment reporter for Time Magazine; Jeff Goodell, author of "How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth's Climate"

Last in a spring seminar series on "Climate Change & the Media," sponsored by the Belfer Center's Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy.

This seminar will focus on the role of the media in communicating about new clean energy technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as well as controversial proposals, such as geoengineering, to 'fix' the climate change problem through technology.  The seminar will look at ways to improve the public dialogue over climate change and technology.

U.S. transportation policy is changing rapidly, motivated by concerns over climate change and energy security. Not only are economy-wide CO2 prices expected to soon be in place, but increasingly stringent performance-based standards are being proposed. Using the National Energy Modeling System, the Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group has analyzed the impact of economy-wide CO2 prices in combination with transportation sector specific policy options including transportation (fuel) taxes, extended fuel economy standards, and performance-based tax credits. The results suggest that the policy options currently considered will fail to meet the "17% of 2005" GHG emissions reduction target in the Waxman-Markey Bill, or even the Obama administration's "14% of 2005" GHG emissions target. Economy-wide CO2 prices motivate large reductions in CO2 emissions from the electrical power sector but do not, on their own, result in significant reductions in CO2 emissions from transportation. Transportation taxes appear to be the most effective option for reducing GHG emissions, largely because they reduce vehicle use in addition to improving vehicle technology. On the other hand, tax credits for alternative-fuel vehicles appear to be an expensive and ineffective path to reducing CO2 emissions from transportation.

Beverages will be provided. Please come ready to discuss...

Policymakers around the world are stepping up their efforts to stimulate deployment of low carbon technologies, including CCS. Policies include carbon pricing, tax incentives, feed-in-tariffs, tradable green certificates schemes, and may others. What can be learned from experience to date in different countries and the policies which are now being introduced? The seminar will include a review of policy measures in the North America, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere and consider how these might be developed in the future to most effectively meet the challenge of decarbonizing the world's economy.  The seminar will also highlight the size of the challenge facing policymakers by examining two examples of developed economies that have adopted challenging targets (California and the UK) and the implications of this for the scale and timing of policy initiatives.

Demand Side Management (DSM) is one of the best and most practical policy tools for China to balance environmental protection and economic growth. U.S. experience, especially the cases of California and Vermont, offers inspiration for further progress in DSM of China. China was first introduced to the concept of DSM in the early 1990s, but the picture is very uneven and there is no clear policy for its broad uptake. In general, the bottleneck for expediting of DSM is the lack of long-term, stable, sufficient and gradually increasing funds to flow into DSM projects. The author redesigns the practical surcharge policy which will provide long-term and stable funding for DSM, the policy to facilitate the financial support from banking sector and capital market, and investigates the possibility of DSM funding from Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects.