News & Announcements

23 Items

News - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

Salata Institute Launches Initiative to Reduce Global Methane Emissions

| July 10, 2023

The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University launched today a major research and outreach initiative to reduce global methane emissions. The initiative seeks meaningful and sustained progress in global methane-emissions reductions through research and effective engagement with government policymakers and with key stakeholders in business, nongovernmental organizations, and international institutions.

Solar panels outside of a Chinese city

Wikimedia CC/WiNG

News - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

Assessing China’s National Carbon Market: An HPCA Conversation with Valerie Karplus, Carnegie Mellon University

    Author:
  • Doug Gavel
| July 22, 2021

China recently launched the world’s largest emissions trading market, but it is just one component of the nation’s ambitious efforts to curb the rise in greenhouse-gas emissions. That was the message delivered on Thursday (July 22) by Carnegie Mellon University Associate Professor Valerie Karplus during a Virtual Forum hosted by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements (HPCA) and moderated by Robert Stavins, HPCA Director and A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development.

Worker holding up a piece of coal in front of a coal-fired power plant in the Netherlands

Wikimedia CC/Adrem68

News - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

Nobel Prize–Winning Economist Joseph Stiglitz Discusses Carbon Pricing and the Green Economy Transition in HPCA Virtual Forum

    Author:
  • Doug Gavel
| Sep. 08, 2020

Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, University Professor at Columbia University, shared his thoughts on carbon pricing, the post-pandemic economic recovery, and green economy transition during a virtual forum on September 8 sponsored by the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, and hosted by Robert Stavins, A.J. Meyer Professor of Energy and Economic Development at Harvard Kennedy School.

Press Release

Economists Find EPA Proposal to Undermine Protections from Power-Plant Mercury Emissions is Based on Incomplete Data and Faulty Analysis

| Dec. 04, 2019

Environmental economists from Harvard, Yale, and other leading research institutions say an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposal that would eventually allow more mercury pollution from power plants relies on a cost-benefit analysis that is fatally flawed. In a new report, the economists detail how the EPA’s calculations inappropriately fail to consider how reducing mercury pollution provides tens of billions of dollars in health benefits to the American people.

Professor Joseph E. Aldy served as a a co-chair and author of this December 2019 report, which was commissioned by the External Environmental Economics Advisory Committee (E-EEAC).

Headquarters offices of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

U.S. EPA

News - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

New Essay Examines 50 Years of Environmental Protection Policy Evolution

    Author:
  • Doug Gavel
| Nov. 08, 2019

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.

Panelists Marshall Ganz, HKS (L); Julia Liou, Asian Health Services; Matthew Tejada, U.S. EPA; Natalicia Tracy, Brazilian Worker Center; Trip Van Noppen, Earthjustice

Bennett Craig, Belfer Center

News

Healthier Nail Salons

    Author:
  • Jessica Colarossi
| Nov. 21, 2016

For more than a decade, the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative has sought to improve the health, safety, and rights of low-paid, vulnerable immigrant workers in a poorly regulated part of the beauty care industry. A recent Harvard Kennedy School panel discussion on "Toxic Beauty: Environmental Justice and Workers' Rights," featured the innovative California initiative and its selection as the winner of the 2016 Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership.

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

"Healthy Nail Salon" Program Wins Harvard's Roy Award for Environmental Partnership

| October 4, 2016

CAMBRIDGE, MA — The John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University announced today that the California Healthy Nail Salon Program, a partnership between the California Healthy Nail Salon Collaborative, Asian Health Services, and five city and county government departments, is the winner of the 2016 Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership.

News

What’s at Stake in Paris - Diplomacy & Policy at the Climate Change Talks

Nov. 22, 2015

Opening the joint CLIMATE CHANGE DIPLOMACY WEEK event series, speakers and leading climate change experts from both Harvard and beyond participated in a panel discussion titled "What's at Stake in Paris?: Diplomacy and Policy at the Climate Change Talks," moderated by the Future of Diplomacy Project Faculty Director, R. Nicholas Burns, and co-hosted with the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements on November 9. The speakers comprised of Sturgis Hooper Professor of Geology at Harvard University, Daniel Schrag;former Costa Rican Minister of Environment and Energy, René Castro; former Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs and chief climate negotiator, Paula Dobriansky; and Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government and Director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, Robert Stavins. Together panellists weighed in on the upcoming UNFCCC talks to be held in Paris in December and the overarching policy issues at play.

This 2.9 million kilowatt, coal-fired generating station, the John E. Amos Plant near St. Albans, W. VA. is the largest power plant on the American Electric Power system, 12 November 2013. It has 1.3 million kw generating unit and two 800,000 kw units.

energy.gov

News - Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, Belfer Center

HEEP Faculty Fellows Participate in ASSA Roundtable on EPA's Clean Power Plan

| January 14, 2014

James Stock, a Faculty Fellow of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program—the Harvard Project's parent program—organized a roundtable discussion that took place on January 4, 2015, at the annual meeting of the Allied Social Science Association, held this year in Boston, entitled "The Economics of the EPA's Proposed Regulation of CO2 Emissions from Power Plants." Professor Stock was a member of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors in 2013–2014, where he worked on the development of this important regulatory proposal. Harvard Environmental Economics Program (HEEP) and Harvard Project Director Robert Stavins participated in the roundtable panel.