Asia & the Pacific

14 Items

U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry is silhouetted near the words "Clean Energy"

AP/Ng Han Guan

Analysis & Opinions - Berkeley Blog

How to Globalize Clean Energy

| June 20, 2020

The authors argue that more determined efforts to globalize renewable energy transmission can confer significantly higher economic and environmental benefits from renewables on billions of people. This can be done by exploiting spatial differences between electricity loads and net renewable generation across time zones (temporal arbitrage) and latitude (seasonal arbitrage). Using very long distance, ultra-high voltage (UHV) transmission infrastructure, temporal and spatial arbitrage can move low-cost clean electricity from areas with excess capacity to high demand zones in other countries and even continents.

A Factory in China at the Yangtze River, Sept. 2008. China's local officials emphasize short-term economic growth over compliance with antipollution directives.

High Contrast Photo CC

Analysis & Opinions - The New York Times

The United States of China

| March 11, 2014

"But adopting federalism would help to ease one of modern China's most fundamental governance problems: The fact that local officials often implement central policies halfheartedly, if at all. Caught in a system that gives them plenty of responsibilities but no accountability to constituents, China's local officials emphasize short-term economic growth over compliance with directives like antipollution and social welfare targets. The result is that environmental and social policies are often badly implemented. If provincial and local officials had a greater voice in developing policy, they would have a greater stake in the outcome of these policies."

4-1-2012: Harbor Island, Seattle, Wash. The Port of Seattle & the Port of Dalian, China, partnered with other public & private sector companies in an EcoPartnership to make port terminals & infrastructures more environmentally sustainable.

Joe Mabel Photo

Analysis & Opinions - Power & Policy Blog

California's Sub-National Diplomacy: The Right Approach

| October 8, 2013

"Sub-national partnerships have the advantage of being far more flexible than nation-to-nation agreements. This makes it easier to target specific needs across national borders, such as the improbable but promising partnership between the port cities of Seattle and Dalian to clean up their harbors. Sub-national agreements are also better suited to policy innovation and the tackling of tough issues like climate change, because the stakes are much lower than at the international level. Consequently, sub-national agreements are particularly well-suited to deal with environmental issues."

Drax Power Station in the Vale of York, where the Government devised plans for the future of coal-fired power stations and the technology which could be used to massively cut their emissions.

AP Photo/John Giles

Discussion Paper

"Post-Durban Climate Policy Architecture Based on Linkage of Cap-and-Trade Systems"

| July 2012

The outcome of the December 2011 United Nations climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa, provides an important new opportunity to move toward an international climate policy architecture that is capable of delivering broad international participation and significant global CO2 emissions reductions at reasonable cost. This paper addresses an important component of potential climate policy architecture for the post-Durban era: links among independent tradable permit systems for greenhouse gases.

- Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School Quarterly Journal: International Security

Belfer Center Newsletter Spring 2011

| Spring 2011

The Spring 2011 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This issue highlights the Belfer Center’s continuing efforts to build bridges between the United States and Russia to prevent nuclear catastrophe – an effort that began in the 1950s. This issue also features three new books by Center faculty that sharpen global debate on critical issues: God’s Century, by Monica Duffy Toft, The New Harvest by Calestous Juma, and The Future of Power, by Joseph S. Nye.

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

Belfer Center Newsletter Winter 2010-11

| Winter 2010-11

The Winter 2010/11 issue of the Belfer Center newsletter features recent and upcoming activities, research, and analysis by members of the Center community on critical global issues. This issue highlights a major Belfer Center conference on technology and governance, the Center's involvement in the nuclear threat documentary Countdown to Zero, and a celebration of Belfer Center founder Paul Doty.

 

Seeking Solutions: A participant (left) gets information at the interactive climate wall during the UN Climate Summit in Copenhagen.

AP Photo

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

Scholars' Views Vary on Copenhagen Successes

"Belfer Center participants in the 2009 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen (UNFCCC) agreed that while the summit did not produce the treaty most wanted, it did make some significant progress. They disagree, however, on how much. Professors JeffreyFrankelKelly Sims Gallagher, and Robert Stavins, all members of the Belfer Center Board of Directors, offer their takeaways from the event."