Environment & Climate Change

The Publication of Enduring Quality award of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (AERE) recognizes works that are of seminal nature and with enduring value in environmental and resource economics. This year, AERE recognized two influential empirical papers on induced innovation in environmental economics: “The Induced Innovation Hypothesis and Energy-Saving Technological Change,” by Richard G. Newell, Adam B. Jaffe, and Robert N. Stavins, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 114, No. 3 (1999), pp. 941-975; and "Induced Innovation and Energy Prices," by David Popp, American Economic Review, Vol. 92, No. 1 (2002), pp. 160–180.

"Hillary Clinton's campaign has stressed her continuity with Obama's energy policy on key aspects such as decarbonization of the US economy, technological innovation and global cooperation. However, policy reforms to deliver long-term climate goals might be out of reach in a highly divided Congress."

On August 3, 2015, President Barack Obama and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy released the final version of the Clean Power Plan (CPP). The CPP's goal is to reduce emissions of CO2 in the United States by 32 percent in 2030, relative to 2005 emissions. See earlier analysis of the CPP by Harvard faculty members and other Harvard-Project affiliates here and here and reaction to the final version by faculty affiliated with the Harvard Law School Environmental Law Program.

The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements hosted, on January 10, 2012, a study tour of Chinese officials working in climate and energy policy. The tour was organized by the World Resources Institute's China office. The study tour and several members of the Harvard faculty discussed options and prospects for international policy to address global climate change.

Harvard Project on Climate Agreements Director Robert N. Stavins delivered a presentation titled "Climate Change: Efficiency and Equity," at The Graduate Institute in Geneva, Switzerland, on November 29, 2011. The talk was one in the Geneva Environmental Dialogue Series of public keynote lectures that the Institute holds annually on a theme related to the international environment. The theme for the 2011–2012 term is "Justice and the Environment."

The effort to address climate change stumbled with the failure to pass cap-and-trade. What should happen now? Five experts, including the Harvard Project's Joe Aldy, discuss the future of U.S. climate and energy policy.

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.

"...[T]he credits a utility earns for a given source of generated electricity should be inversely proportional to the CO2 emissions associated with that source. Renewables and nuclear would earn full credit whereas natural gas and fuel oil sources would earn less, and conventional coal less than that. If properly structured, this can provide the right incentives for investment and retirement of electricity-generating capacity and the right incentives for dispatch from existing capacity."

The climate change talks in Cancun, Mexico, didn't solve all the world's climate problems. But they were hugely successful. Through the Cancun Agreements, 194 countries reached landmark consensus (even the US and China) to set emissions targets and limit global temperature increases.