Energy

India aims to become a leading producer of green hydrogen by the next decade as part of its broader industrial and decarbonization strategies. This brief provides an overview of India's current hydrogen strategy, as well as the challenges - land and water scarcity, infrastructure gaps, and financing gaps - that must be addressed in order for India to achieve its ambitious goals.

Joseph Nye considers lessons from his own work on preventing the spread of nuclear technology in the 1970s.

The Harvard Project participates in a major Harvard initiative aimed at reducing emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas. Participating researchers represent a range of academic disciplines and Harvard schools.

Among the many issues surrounding China’s ongoing military modernization, perhaps none has been more dramatic than its nuclear weapons program. For decades, the Chinese government was content to maintain a comparatively small nuclear force. As recently as 2020, China’s arsenal was little changed from previous decades and amounted to some 220 weapons, around five to six percent of either the U.S. or Russian stockpiles of deployed and reserve warheads.

“This is not a decision or set of steps that are happening in haste by any means, and this is a practice that is common and consistent around the world and with the nuclear energy industry,” said Marina Lorenzini of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

According to data posted online by the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, water with much higher levels of tritium has been discharged by nuclear facilities in countries including China, South Korea, Canada and France in line with local regulations.

Lorenzini said that the IAEA’s active engagement in the Fukushima process “makes me feel a lot more comfortable and confident with the events we see playing out today.”

The IAEA said this week that it would maintain an onsite presence at the Fukushima plant, where it opened an office last month, and publish real-time and near real-time monitoring data.

“I think we have good reason to believe that this will be a well-monitored and well-maintained operation,” Lorenzini said.

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.

The geopolitical implications of solar displacing oil as the world’s major source of energy are enormous. Why has the Middle East been a central arena in the “great game” for the past century? Because countries there have been the major suppliers of the oil and gas that powered 20th-century economies. If, over the next decade, photovoltaic cells that capture energy from the sun were to replace a substantial part of the demand for oil and gas, who will the biggest losers be? And even more consequentially: who will be the biggest winner?

Daniel Schrag and Henry Lee discuss the policies China could enact in the near-term to ease its transition to a low-carbon economy, the subject of their book Foundations for a Low-Carbon Energy System in China (Cambridge University Press, 2021). 

Environmental policy experts discussed China’s energy policies during an event at the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs on April 10, 2023. The event featured Weila Gong, a Belfer Center postdoctoral research fellow, and Georgetown University professor Joanna I. Lewis, who discussed their joint research exploring China’s coal consumption, its pledge to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060, and the political and economic factors hindering the country’s transition away from coal.

Belfer Center experts on the U.S.-China relationship and Middle East issues shared thoughts on the significance of the unexpected Iran-Saudi Arabia agreement brokered by China.