Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

The Harvard Project will conduct two side-event panels at the Twenty-Fourth Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, in Poland in December 2018. In addition, Professor Robert Stavins, Director of the Harvard Project, will speak at several events hosted by other organizations.

This paper utilizes a game-theoretical model, predicting that emission cuts are more likely to be self-enforcing if they are negotiated within a pledge-and-review agreement.

The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements conducted a research workshop, “Governance of the Deployment of Solar Geoengineering,” September 27 – 28, 2018 at Harvard Kennedy School. Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program collaborated and provided support for the workshop. 

This paper addresses key design issues that were identified by the California state legislature and Air Resources Board in the new compliance period (2021 – 2030) of California’s cap-and-trade system.

The authors introduce geoengineering into an optimal control model of climate economics. Together with mitigation and adaptation, carbon and solar geoengineering span all possible climate policies. Their wildly different characteristics have important implications for policy. They show in the context of their model that: (i) whether emissions are positive or zero the optimal carbon tax always equals the marginal cost of carbon geoengineering; (ii) the introduction of either form of geoengineering leads to higher emissions yet lower temperatures; (iii) in a world with above-optimal cumulative emissions, mitigation alone is insufficient and only a complete set of instruments can minimize climate damages.

This is an updated version of a paper first published in July 2017.

Harvard Kennedy School, in collaboration with the Harvard Project, will offer an executive education program, “Climate Change and Energy: Policy Making for the Long Term,” Sept. 30 – Oct. 5, 2018. Robert Stavins and other global experts will lead sessions.

This chapter explores how Article 6 of the Paris Agreement may support international cooperation to address climate change, with particular reference to Northeast Asia. The chapter focuses especially on Article 6.2, which provides the opportunity for countries to apply emissions reductions from other jurisdictions to the attainment of their own nationally determined contributions.

Professor Stavins presents the RSIS Distinguished Public Lecture at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, in cooperation with the National University of Singapore, May 3, 2018.