Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

Robert Stavins interviews Andrei Marcu, founder and executive director of the European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition, at COP-25 in Madrid, Spain.

Andrei Marcu, founder and executive director of the European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition, provided his insights on the UN Climate Change conference taking place in Madrid this week.

How do the two major approaches to carbon pricing compare on relevant dimensions, including efficiency, cost-effectiveness, and distributional equity? This paper addresses this question by drawing on theories of policy instrument choice pertaining to the attributes — or merits — of the instruments.

The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements will conduct two panel events at the Twenty-Fifth Conference of the Parties (COP-25) of the UNFCCC in Madrid, Spain during the week of December 9, 2019. In addition, Professor Robert Stavins, Director of the Harvard Project, and Professor Joseph Aldy will speak at several events hosted by other organizations.

An exclusive interview with Lord Nicholas Stern, one of the world’s foremost experts on climate change.

In a new essay published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, HKS Professor Robert Stavins and MIT Sloan School of Management Professor Emeritus Richard Schmalensee argue that economists and policymakers alike will need to re-frame their thinking for addressing the nation’s current environmental challenges, including climate change, to overcome the tremendous political hurdles that now exist.

The 1970 Clean Air Act established the basic architecture of the U.S. air pollution control system: It was the first environmental law to give the federal government a serious regulatory role, and it became a model for many subsequent environmental laws in the United States and abroad. In this article, the authors describe the evolution of air pollution control policy under this legislation with particular attention to the types of policy instruments used.

Robert Stavins responds to "Climate Change's Unknown Costs" by Naomi Oreskes and Nicholas Stern, which appeared in the New York Times on October 25, 2019.

Lord Nicholas Stern, one of the world’s most prominent climate change economists, told hundreds who gathered at the Geological Lecture Hall on the Harvard campus on October 15 that just as economic and technological change has brought us to this challenging moment in history, so too can it seed the solutions necessary to mitigate the impacts of global warming.

The climate agreement on international aviation is unique, in that no other sector has a policy that places an absolute global cap on net CO2 emissions. This policy brief provides an overview of how the scheme was designed, its characteristics, and the role played by the International Air Transport Association.