Energy

For many, integrating “decarbonization” into public policy, corporate and financial strategies has become a requirement, not an option — yet, what happens when the critical link between climate stability and decarbonization breaks?

Institutional reforms are key to China tackling climate change. More are needed to secure a low-carbon future, write Henry Lee and Daniel Schrag.

In recent years, the relationship between China and the United States has been characterized by rising geopolitical tensions, and cooperation and coordination between the two countries has become something of a pipe dream. Yet there is one issue where the interests of both clearly overlap: climate change. A global temperature increase of 3°C will damage the economies and social fabric of both the United States and China—an outcome that both countries want to avoid. 

Kelly Sims Gallagher asserts that politicians' pledges of dramatic long-term reductions should not let them off the hook for their failure to achieve more modest progress in the short term.

In order to fully appreciate the global climate-change challenge that the Biden administration will face, Robert Stavins reflects on the history of international negotiations that brought us to this point.

President-elect Joe Biden’s decision to create a new cabinet-level position for climate-related issues — and to choose so prominent a figure as former Secretary of State John Kerry to fill it — demonstrates Biden’s sincerity over putting climate at the very center of U.S. foreign policy. It is easy to understate the importance of this appointment, given the flurry of czars created by most new administrations.

Trump's critics say that lack of success means the president is going to the United Nations in a weakened position.

China's national carbon emissions trading program is expected to become the world's largest carbon market and is critical for achieving China's domestic mitigation goals. But China's trading program is likely to face significant challenges, due to its large scale and high complexity. To address these challenges, we provide a series of policy recommendations, including capacity building from central to local levels, wise selection of allowance allocation methods to cope with changing economic realities, and deepening market-oriented reforms in energy sectors and SOEs.

The world will soberly commemorate the 33rd anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant catastrophic accident on Friday, April 26, 2019.  Some may wonder why bother with a gone-by historical event that happened in a distant land — a country that no longer exists — the former Soviet Union (now Ukraine).  On the contrary, Chernobyl and its legacy, with its specters of lingering human toll, radiation contamination, and the massive new shelter ("New Safe Confinement") installed over the old sarcophagus encasing the reactor, will be with us for a long time.