News & Announcements

Climate change is a global problem that will require global solutions. Harvard Kennedy School expects to be a part of the solution through the development of academically rigorous research and ideas, and by engaging policymakers, non-governmental actors, practitioners, scholars, and others from around the world.

In this installment of “Inside the Middle East: Q&A,” Dr. Abbas Al-Mejren, Kuwait Foundation Visiting Scholar at the Middle East Initiative and Professor of Economics at Kuwait University, discusses economic development plans in Kuwait and Gulf Cooperation Council countries, including poverty alleviation and rationalizing subsidies.

Daniel Poneman, former Deputy Secretary of Energy, has joined Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs as a senior fellow.

Poneman was nominated by President Obama to be Deputy Secretary of Energy on April 20, 2009, and was confirmed by the United States Senate on May 18, 2009. Under the leadership of Secretaries of Energy Steven Chu and Ernest Moniz, Poneman also served as Chief Operating Officer of the Department. Between April 23, 2013, and May 21, 2013, Poneman served as Acting Secretary of Energy.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), at the direction of President Barack Obama, released a landmark rule on June 2, 2014 that aims to reduce carbon emissions from the electric-power sector by 30 percent, nationwide, below 2005 levels by 2030. Robert Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government at the Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) and Director of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, was interviewed by HKS about the new rule.

The Harvard Kennedy School is pleased to announce the Fall 2013 funding cycle for the Kuwait Program Research Fund.

"...[T]he reason I am more optimistic today is that just two years ago at the annual Conference of the Parties, this time in Durban, South Africa, a new approach was approved by the community of nations. And that is an approach which promises that by the year 2015 to come up with an international agreement that will include all countries in the same legal framework. That breaks from this Berlin mandate, which I think has been an anchor dragging against forward movement of the ship of progress. Now, with this new commitment from the community of nations to come up with an international agreement by 2015, for implementation by 2020, in which all countries will participate, there is for the first time in decades a real opportunity for meaningful progress."

This document contains February 2012 updates to our database on U.S. government investments in energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment (ERD3) through the Department of Energy. The database, in Microsoft Excel format, tracks DOE appropriations from FY 1978–2011 and the FY 2012 and 2013 budget requests and includes funding for ERD3 from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. It also includes several charts.

The report, Transforming U.S. Energy Innovation, released on Nov. 22, 2011,is the result of a three-year energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment (ERD3) project of the Energy Technology Innovation Policy (ETIP) research group at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The ERD3 project was funded by a grant from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to produce and promote a comprehensive set of recommendations to help the U.S. administration accelerate the development and deployment of low-carbon energy technologies.

Securing America's Future Energy (SAFE), in collaboration with the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, has created a free college curriculum box set that includes all of the materials needed to conduct an energy crisis simulation in your classroom. The exercise is based on Oil ShockWave™, SAFE's one-of-a-kind oil crisis simulation, which has featured participants such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates, former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, Pulitzer-Prize-winning author Dan Yergin and former director of the CIA R. James Woolsey.