Energy

77 Items

Photo of test engineer Jacob Wilcox pulling his arm out of a glove box used for processing sodium at TerraPower, a company developing and building small nuclear reactors on Jan.

AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File

Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Policy

By Not Acting on Climate, Congress Endangers U.S. National Security

| July 21, 2022

Last week, U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin seemingly dashed Democrats’ hopes for congressional action to slow climate change. Sen. Bernie Sanders accused Manchin of “sabotag[ing] the president’s agenda”; Rep. John Yarmuth, when asked about the consequences of Congress not acting on climate change, said, “We’re all going to die”; and climate activists, as well as some Democrats in Congress, wondered if Manchin should be removed as chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

Photo of pipes at the landfall facilities of the 'Nord Stream 2' gas pipline are pictured in Lubmin, northern Germany, on Feb. 15, 2022. Stream 2 is a 1,230-kilometer-long (764-mile-long) natural gas pipeline under the Baltic Sea, running from Russia to Germany's Baltic coast.

(AP Photo/Michael Sohn, File)

Analysis & Opinions - The New York Times

The West's Delusion of Energy Independence

Feb. 20, 2022

Russia’s belligerence against Ukraine is underscoring once again the inextricable link between national security and energy security. Today, Russia is flexing its energy dominance over a dependent Europe. But tomorrow, the danger may come from China and its control over the raw materials that are key to a clean energy future.

The United States and its allies must ensure that doesn’t happen.

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Analysis & Opinions - Foreign Affairs

Pathogens Have the World’s Attention: The United States Should Lead a New Push Against Bioweapons

| Mar. 16, 2021

U.S. President Joe Biden has spoken frequently of restoring the United States’ credibility as a global leader. That task, which comes at a moment of global crisis, will require the United States to recommit to multilateral diplomacy, even while managing a dangerously deteriorating relationship with China. By acting on biosecurity—a neglected priority hiding in plain sight—Biden can make progress on all of these goals. Washington has an opportunity to lead in an era of heightened great-power competition, address the need for arms control measures that reduce the risk of biological weapons, and potentially even push China to cooperate to that end.  

The oil tanker Stena Impero in an Iranian port

(Tasnim News Agency/via AP)

Analysis & Opinions - The Washington Post

Oil Probably Won’t Cause a War with Iran, but It Certainly Adds Fuel to the Blaze

    Author:
  • Jeff D. Colgan
| July 20, 2019

The relationship between oil and war is complicated—and much of the time, oil disputes are resolved peacefully. The more dangerous disputes are those where tensions over oil exacerbate other factors on the road to war.

Belfer Center Director Ash Carter speaks on technological change for good during a HUBweek 2018 "We the Future" event at Harvard Innovation Lab in October.

Benn Craig/Belfer Center

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

Managing Technology's Risks to Society

| Fall/Winter 2018-2019

Making technological change positive for all is the critical challenge of our time. We ourselves—not only the logic of discovery and market forces—must manage it. To create a future where technology serves humanity as a whole, we need a new approach. Therefore, the Belfer Center has launched a new endeavor, the Technology and Public Purpose (TAPP) Project.

Photo of Calestous Juma in his office.

Martha Stewart

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

Remembering Our Colleague Professor Calestous Juma

| Dec. 18, 2017

Our colleague Calestous Juma—who passed away on December 15 at age 64 after a long illness—was a pioneering, prolific, and influential scholar/practitioner in science and technology policy for sustainable well-being. He joined Harvard Kennedy School (HKS) in 1999 as Director of the Science, Technology, and Innovation Project (a joint venture of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and the Center for International Development) and became Professor of the Practice of International Development in 2002, a position in which he maintained his exceptional productivity and engagement with policy, despite illness, up to the time of his death.

In this October 16, 2017 photo, power lines lay broken after the passage of Hurricane Maria in Dorado, Puerto Rico. A month after the storm rolled across the center of the island, power is still out for the vast majority of people as the work to restore hundreds of miles of transmission and distribution lines grinds on.(AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

(AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa)

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Investing in a Modernized Grid Can Advance U.S. Energy and National Security

| Nov. 07, 2017

Extreme weather events have tragically upended lives and damaged communities across the United States in the past two months. Climate change deniers are hard pressed to continue insisting that there is no connection between human activity and rising temperatures and stronger hurricanes: the American people are living with the evidence, from California wildfires to torrential storms and biblical-scale flooding in Texas, Florida and the Caribbean. September 2017 was the most intensive month for Atlantic hurricanes on record and more than a million acres have burned in California this year due to the most damaging wildfires on record.