Environment & Climate Change

138 Items

New Haven City Engineer Giovanni Zinn describes the need for bioswales which reduce intense flooding in the city.

Benn Craig/Belfer Center

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

Winning Partnership Works to Prevent City Flooding

| Fall/Winter 2018-2019

New Haven, Connecticut is a city of about130,000 people—a typical American city in terms of size and challenges. One of the major and growing challenges facing New Haven and other cities is flooding. Increasingly extreme rainstorms and rising sea levels, both caused by climate change, are taxing local drainage systems and destroying vulnerable neighborhoods. An innovative partnership in New Haven is responding by building bioswales, a cost-effective green infrastructure that reduces pollution and urban flooding in a major rainstorm.

In 2011, science advisors to the presidents of China and the United States, Wan Gang and John P. Holdren, hold a photo of the historic 1979 U.S.-China agreement on science and engineering.

USDA

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

Center's Energy Work Wields Impact and Influence Around the World

| Fall/Winter 2016-2017

The Belfer Center began researching energy technology issues in the late 1990s. Its mission was “to determine and promote the adoption of effective strategies for developing and deploying cleaner and more efficient energy technologies that can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce dependence on fossil fuels and stress on water resources, and improve economic development.”

In this issue, we look at the history and influence of the Center’s energy innovation efforts in the past two decades by focusing primarily on ETIP’s work in the U.S. and China.

teaser image

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

Study Examines Water Used for Fuel Extraction, Power Generation

January 26, 2016

A new study co-authored by researchers at Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, and the University of Calgary provides the first comprehensive representation of changing water consumption patterns associated with fuel extraction and power generation.

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

Anna Goldstein: Bridging the Gap Between Scientists and Policymakers

    Author:
  • Stephanie Wheeler
| Fall/Winter 2015-2016

Anna Goldstein is, at the moment, a scientist standing at a crossroad. Since her PhD from University of California, Berkeley is in chemistry, one might imagine Goldstein working in the lab. Instead, she’s at the Belfer Center researching the policy side of technology.

Paper - Harvard Kennedy School

Making Technological Innovation Work for Sustainable Development

| December 2015

Sustainable development requires harnessing technological innovation to improve human well-being in current and future generations. However, poor, marginalized, and unborn populations too often lack the economic or political power to shape innovation processes to meet their needs. Issues arise at all stages of innovation, from invention of a technology through its selection, production, adaptation, adoption, and retirement.

Journal Article - Nature Climate Change

Targeted Opportunities to Address the Climate–trade Dilemma in China

    Authors:
  • Steven J Davis
  • Kuishuang Feng
  • Klaus Hubacek
  • Sai Liang
  • Bin Chen
  • Jingru Liu
  • Jinyue Yan
  • Dabo Guan
| 2015

International trade has become the fastest growing driver of global carbon emissions, with large quantities of emissions embodied in exports from emerging economies. International trade with emerging economies poses a dilemma for climate and trade policy: to the extent emerging markets have comparative advantages in manufacturing, such trade is economically efficient and desirable. However, if carbon-intensive manufacturing in emerging countries such as China entails drastically more CO2 emissions than making the same product elsewhere, then trade increases global CO2 emissions.

Report - Energy Technology Innovation Policy Project, Belfer Center

Energy Technology Innovation Policy in the Backdrop of the U.S.-China Emissions Agreement

The Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Tsinghua School of Public Policy and Management convened a workshop at Tsinghua University in Beijing on June 18–19, 2015 to build on the momentum created by the U.S.-China joint emissions agreement and the upcoming Paris negotiations. The objective of the Workshop was to discuss the current state of affairs in China, in the United States, and in selected other countries as well as academic research on: (1) the funding and allocation of government investments in R&D, with a particular focus in energy; (2) the impact of policy on private sector innovation in energy; and (3) the management of publicly funded R&D organizations.

A Chinese power plant.

CC-BY-SA-3.0

Journal Article - Nature

Reduced Carbon Emission Estimates from Fossil Fuel Combustion and Cement Production in China

    Authors:
  • Dabo Guan
  • Wei Wei
  • Steven J Davis
  • Philippe Ciais
  • Jin Bai
  • Shushi Peng
  • Qiang Zhang
  • Klaus Hubacek
  • Gregg Marland
  • Robert J. Andres
  • Douglas Crawford-Brown
  • Jintai Lin
  • Hongyan Zhao
  • Chaopeng Hong
  • Thomas A. Boden
  • Kuishuang Feng
  • Glen P. Peters
  • Fengming Xi
  • Junguo Liu
  • Yuan Li
  • Yu Zhao
  • Ning Zeng
  • Kebin He
| August 2015

The authors findings suggest that overestimation of China's emissions in 2000–2013 may be larger than China's estimated total forest sink in 1990–2007 or China's land carbon sink in 2000–2009.The revisions of the Chinese emissions are substantial enough that they may lead to adjustments in the Global Carbon Cycle.

The agricultural fields in active use (dark green) or fallow (brown to tan), are approximately 1 km in diameter. Much of the Saudi Arabia's Wadi As-Sirhan Basin shown here is sandy (light tan to brown surfaces).

Wikimedia CC 2.0

Journal Article - Sustainable Production and Consumption

Food Security Amidst Water Scarcity: Insights on Sustainable Food Production from Saudi Arabia

Water, energy, and food security are of critical concern as rising population growth and rapid urbanization place greater pressure on our natural resources. This study evaluates the growing internationalization of food production in water-scarce countries using the case of Saudi Arabia as a microcosm to illustrate the tradeoffs in resource consumption associated with crop selection and farming practices.