Category: Energy Economics

A Blast from the Past: U.S. Climate Policy Then and Now

We have just released the newest episode of our podcast, “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.”  In this latest episode, I engage in a conversation with Joseph Aldy, my Harvard colleague, and an individual with considerable experience at multiple levels and capacities in the U.S. government, including in the White House during the Obama Administration, with the common theme in Joe’s government service being substantial focus on the economic dimensions of energy and environmental policy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Joe is a Professor of the Practice of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, a University Fellow of Resources for the Future, and a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research.  At Harvard, he is also the Faculty Chair of the Regulatory Policy Program in the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, a Faculty Fellow of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program, and co-founder with me – when he was working full-time at Resources for the Future – of the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements.

Professor Aldy worked in the White House during the first two years of the Obama Administration, helping direct the administration’s climate change policy while serving as Special Assistant to the President for Energy and Environment.  In this new podcast – which I very much hope you’ll check out – he remarks that, “the most challenging aspect of the job was recognizing that your to-do list at 7:30 or 8:00 in the morning may get wiped out by something unexpected that happens later that day.” As an example, he references the Deep Water Horizon oil spill in April 2010, which eventually resulted in new government regulations designed to reduce the risk of such accidents in future years.

In addition to reflecting on Joe’s experiences in the Clinton and Obama administrations, much of our conversation also touched on what can be expected from today’s international climate negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Paris Agreement, and from the U.S. government today and in future years.

In the international domain, Aldy characterizes the Paris Climate Agreement of 2016 as providing a solid framework for significant international cooperation and progress.  “It says something that we have every country in the world or virtually every country in the world pledging to do something to reduce their emissions,” he says. “I think that is a great first step.”

Turning to domestic U.S. efforts to address climate change, Joe is considerably more skeptical, given the current political context:  “Until there are members of Congress or Senators who fear that by being silent on the issue or actively opposing taking action to combat climate change, until they see real political cost at the polls, I think it’s hard to imagine there being a bipartisan future.”

All of this and much more is found in the newest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.” Listen to this latest discussion here, where, by the way, you can also find a complete transcript of our conversation.

My conversation with Joe Aldy is the seventh episode in the Environmental Insights series.  Previous episodes have featured conversations with:

“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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Important, Despite the Controversy — Geoengineering Research

We have just released the newest episode of our podcast, “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.”  In this latest episode, I engage in a conversation with David Keith, professor at Harvard and one of the world’s leading authorities on geoengineering.

Recently, the Earth System Research Laboratory of NOAA – the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – announced that it had received authorization to study what they characterized as “Plan B for climate change,” namely to examine the science behind what is usually referred to as “geoengineering,” including the possibility of injecting particular aerosols into the stratosphere to help shade the Earth from sunlight.  NOAA emphasized that this and other techniques of geoengineering are recommended in a forthcoming study from the National Academies titled, “Climate Intervention Strategies that Reflect Sunlight to Cool Earth.”

Until now, neither the U.S. Congress nor the Administration has moved forward with such work, but NOAA pointed out to the press that “the closest thing to testing is a Harvard University project called the “Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment.”  That project is co-directed by my guest in the latest episode of our podcast, David Keith, who directs the closely-related Solar Geoengineering Research Program.

David is the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and a Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School.

In this new episode of our monthly podcast, Professor Keith recounts how he came to focus his research on climate change, and how his interest in geoengineering evolved.  All of this is found in the newest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.” Listen to this latest discussion here.

David is renowned for his work at the intersection of climate science, energy technology, and public policy over the past 25 years.  A Canadian native, he is faculty director of Harvard’s Solar Geoengineering Research Program, a Harvard-wide interfaculty research initiative which aims to further critical research on both the science and governance of solar geoengineering. While best known for his work on geoengineering, Keith has also conducted extensive research on carbon capture and storage, and is the founder of Carbon Engineering, a company which develops technologies for direct air capture (an approach that he keeps completely separate from his Harvard research, which focuses on solar radiation management).

In our conversation, I asked David what work he is most proud of – a difficult question for any researcher to answer, because the question is akin to asking a parent to identify his or her favorite child.  After taking some time to reflect, David cited his landmark 2000 article in the Annual Review of Energy and the Environment, in which he first presented the case for the potential of solar geoengineering to help mitigate the impacts of global climate change.  It was a controversial study which prompted intense pushback from some environmental activists and some academics who argued that such technologies would lessen political pressure to address the root causes of climate change, that is greenhouse gas emissions.

“This is a thing where people have extremely strong opinions, and I don’t think that solar geoengineering necessarily makes sense as policy. I think it might well make sense to ban it. What I do think is that it deserves serious study and that we won’t make better decisions about it by kind of maintaining a taboo where nobody talks or thinks about it,” he said.

“Sensible climate policy is not one thing and a kind of monomania around emissions cuts doesn’t make sense. Of course, we have to do emissions cuts. It’s the single most important thing. If we don’t do it, nothing else does it, but the idea that it’s only emissions cuts, I think, is just now clearly wrong.”

“It may be that thinking about solar geoengineering for some people should mean a permanent moratoria, and for other people, it should mean pathways towards deployment.  I’m open minded about what the right answer is, but I think it is one of the big climate policy instruments, and we won’t do sensible policy if you pretend it’s not there.”

My conversation with David Keith is the sixth episode in the Environmental Insights series.  Previous episodes have featured conversations with:

“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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A Firsthand Account of European Carbon-Pricing Evolution

We have just released the newest episode of our podcast, “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.”  In this latest episode, I engage in a conversation with Jos Delbeke, currently a professor at the European University Institute in Florence and at the KU Leuven in Belgium.

Professor Delbeke is probably best known for his long service at the European Commission, including as Director-General of the Commission’s DG Climate Action from its creation in 2010 until 2018.  Even before that, he was very heavily involved in the development and implementation of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), and for several years was the European Commission’s chief negotiator at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Conferences of the Parties. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In this new episode of our monthly podcast, Jos Delbeke recounts the evolution of carbon pricing in Europe and around the world, and comments on the current state of international climate change negotiations.  You can listen to the interview here.

Recalling his early days working on climate policy in Europe, Delbeke says that “emissions trading was an alien idea at that time … As an economist, I followed very much how the United States was developing the sulfur experiment.”

Delbeke maintains that the EU-ETS has been very successful.  “The latest statistics show that between 2005 when we started, and today … the emissions reduction is 29%, and that is for all the installations in Europe, all big installations, and the energy and the manufacturing industry.  So, 29% down in less than 15 years, I think is quite remarkable when we compare it to emissions from transport that are roughly 20% up,” he states.

Delbeke believes that the emerging Chinese ETS could be transformative in the global effort to combat global warming.  “Once the Chinese have their act together, I think that may serve as a source of inspiration for a lot of other nations,” he says.

Delbeke’s interview is the fifth episode in the Environmental Insights series.  Previous episodes have featured conversations with:

“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

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