Science, Technology, and Public Policy

On February 16, 2015, Professor of Practice Matthew Bunn presented "The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: Next Steps" for the Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations.

Dr. Hui Zhang presented "Options for China’s Nuclear Spent Fuel Management" at the Workshop on Strategic Nuclear Issues in East Asia, Beijing, China March 5-6, 2014.

This seminar considered how the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reacted to nuclear crises. The IAEA often appears not just to have weathered such crises, but to have successfully leaped through windows of opportunity presented by them. This has resulted in periodic expansions of its mandate, capabilities, and resources. The 2011 Fukushima disaster appears to be a puzzling exception, raising the question of what concatenation of factors needs to be present for the IAEA to take advantage of nuclear crises.

Matthew Bunn presented "Nuclear Security: What is Required" to a joint Harvard/Peking University workshop in Beijing.

Melissa Chan and Laura Diaz Anadon of the Energy Research, Development, Demonstration & Deployment (ERD3) Policy Project presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS).

"A Technology-Based Greenhouse Gas Reduction Strategy for 2030" was presented by Melissa Chan and Laura Diaz Anadon of the Energy Research, Development, Demonstration & Deployment (ERD3) Policy Project at the U.S. Society of Ecological Economics 2009 Conference, Washington, D.C., June 1, 2009.

Historical patterns of growth across a range of energy technologies are used to explore "scaling". Scaling is used to describe a particular form of growth that is (i) both rapid and substantive, taking into account the overall size of the energy system, and (ii) occurs at multiple levels from the technical unit and/or plant to the industry as a whole (e.g., from a wind turbine or wind farm to total installed wind capacity or manufacturing output). Scaling dynamics are assessed in historical time series data on vehicles, jet aircraft, refineries, and power plants (nuclear, coal, gas, wind). In those cases for which S-shaped growth is clearly evidenced, logistic function parameters are used to compare scaling across different technologies.

In this presentation, Liu: (1) explores major opportunities for deployment of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies in China; (2) identifies critical enabling technologies for CCS to underpin future Chinese capacity to respond to climate change; (3) and assesses China’s capabilities to develop critical CCS enabling technologies.

In this talk, Chikkatur provides some background on Indian coal-power, dives into India's current emissions and regulations, its key policy issues, and finally he proposes a way forward for meeting the many challenges associated with India's coal.

Former ExxonMobil executive Jack Johnston presented on technology and how a more systematic approach to thinking about failure in complex systems could enable us to more effectively pursue technology as well as formulate and evolve policy.