156 Items

bus that runs on green hydrogen, framed by leaves

AP Photo/Anupam Nath

Report - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

India - The New Global Green Hydrogen Powerhouse?

| Mar. 26, 2024

India aims to become a leading producer of green hydrogen by the next decade as part of its broader industrial and decarbonization strategies. This brief provides an overview of India's current hydrogen strategy, as well as the challenges - land and water scarcity, infrastructure gaps, and financing gaps - that must be addressed in order for India to achieve its ambitious goals.

A public charging station for electric vehicles in New Delhi, India, Thursday, April 1, 2021.

AP Photo/Neha Mehrotra

Journal Article - Nature Energy

Understanding India’s Low-Carbon Energy Technology Startup Landscape

| Dec. 15, 2022

Low-carbon energy technology (LCET) startups could play a key role in accelerating India’s decarbonization. Yet, understanding of the LCET startup landscape and what shapes it remains low. This paper provides an analysis of the Indian LCET startup landscape to fill this gap.

Solar Panels in Israel

Courtesy of the Author, Michael Roth

Journal Article - Energy and Climate Change

Policy Spillovers, Technological Lock-In, and Efficiency Gains from Regional Pollution Taxes in the U.S.

| December 2022

We used the US-TIMES energy-system model in conjunction with integrated assessment models for air pollution (AP3, EASIUR, InMAP) to estimate the consequences of local air pollutant (LAP) and carbon dioxide (CO2) policy on technology-choice, energy-system costs, emissions, and pollution damages in the United States. We report substantial policy spillover: Both LAP and CO2 taxes cause similar levels of decarbonization. Under LAP taxes, decarbonization was a result of an increase in natural gas generation and a near-complete phaseout of coal generation in the electric sector. Under a CO2 tax, the majority of simulated decarbonization was a result of increased electric generation from wind and solar. We also found that the timing of the CO2 and LAP taxes was important. When we simulated a LAP tax beginning in 2015 and waited until 2025 to introduce a CO2 tax, the electric sector was locked into higher levels of natural gas generation and cumulative 2010–2035 energy system CO2 emissions were 8.8 billion tons higher than when the taxes were implemented simultaneously. A scenario taxing CO2 and LAPs simultaneously beginning in 2015 produced the highest net benefits, as opposed to scenarios that target either CO2 or LAPs, or scenarios that delayed either LAP or CO2 taxes until 2025. Lastly, we found that net benefits compared to business as usual are higher under a regional versus a national LAP-tax regime, but that efficiency gains under the regional tax are not substantially higher than those under the national LAP-tax policy.

Solar plant in Uttar Pradesh

Citizenmj/Wikimedia

Journal Article - Energy Policy

Trade-Offs and Synergies in Power Sector Policy Mixes: The Case of Uttar Pradesh, India

| May 2022

How can electricity sector policymakers in developing countries ensure financial viability of utilities while also extending electricity access and minimizing the environmental impact of electricity supply? This study uses a mixed-method approach to analyze synergies and trade-offs between policies for financial reform of utilities, extending electricity access, and solar PV deployment in the case of Uttar Pradesh in India.

Energy efficient LED light bulbs hang in an Indian home

UN Environment/Lisa Murray

Journal Article - Climate Policy

Building Institutional Capacity for Addressing Climate and Sustainable Development Goals: Achieving Energy Efficiency in India

| September 2021

The capacity to manage technological change is an important prerequisite for climate change mitigation, adaptation, and green growth. This paper explores how capacity might be built in developing countries in the context of climate and sustainable development challenges through an in-depth qualitative case study on energy efficiency in India.

Book - Cambridge University Press

Foundations for a Low-Carbon Energy System in China

How can China make good on its pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2060? In Foundations for a Low-Carbon Energy System in China, a team of experts from China and the United States explains how China's near-term climate and energy policies can affect long-term decarbonization pathways beyond 2030, building the foundations for a smoother and less costly national energy transformation.

Solar Panels at HUDA City Center, Gurgaon, India, 31 December 2015.

Wikimedia CC/Rsrikanth05

News - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

Harvard Project Co-Sponsors Webinar on Climate and Energy Policy in India

| Apr. 12, 2021

The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements co-sponsored a webinar on March 30, 2021: “The Future of Green India: Energy and Climate Change.” Hosting the event was the Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute at Harvard University. The other co-sponsors were the Environment and Natural Resources Program in the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School — and the Harvard University Center for the Environment. The Harvard Global Institute provided support for the seminar and a larger project of which it is part.

Kinnaur Kailash, Kalpa, Himachal Pradesh, India

Saurav Kundu/Unsplash

Policy Brief

Should Regulators Make Electric Utilities Pay Customers for Poor Reliability?

| June 09, 2020

This policy brief describes the persistent challenge of poor electricity reliability in India and how it interacts with key regulatory policies, analyzes Delhi’s experience with outage compensation since 2017, and highlights areas for additional economic and policy research on this topic.

A photo of electrolysis in action. (Flickr: ca_heckler)

Flickr: ca_heckler / CC by-nc-nd 2.0

Report

Geopolitical and Market Implications of Renewable Hydrogen: New Dependencies in a Low-Carbon Energy World

| March 2020

To accelerate the global transition to a low-carbon economy, all energy systems and sectors must be actively decarbonized. While hydrogen has been a staple in the energy and chemical industries for decades, renewable hydrogen is drawing increased attention today as a versatile and sustainable energy carrier with the potential to play an important piece in the carbon-free energy puzzle. Countries around the world are piloting new projects and policies, yet adopting hydrogen at scale will require innovating along the value chains; scaling technologies while significantly reducing costs; deploying enabling infrastructure; and defining appropriate national and international policies and market structures.

What are the general principles of how renewable hydrogen may reshape the structure of global energy markets? What are the likely geopolitical consequences such changes would cause? A deeper understanding of these nascent dynamics will allow policy makers and corporate investors to better navigate the challenges and maximize the opportunities that decarbonization will bring, without falling into the inefficient behaviors of the past.