2013 Roy Award Finalists Announced
ENRP is pleased to announce the six finalists for the 2013 Roy Family Award for Environmental Partnership More>
FEATURED PUBLICATIONS
April 30, 2013
Obama’s Dilemma: The Keystone XL Pipeline Decision
By Zahra Hirji
David Keith, Michael Levi, and Elana Schor discussed how the media influence public debate on the Keystone XL decision during a special seminar sponsored by the Environment and Natural Resources Program.
March 2013
Sustainability Certification in the Biofuel Sector
This paper assesses how certification programs adopted by EU countries have affected biofuel development in Brazil, and identifies some of the lessons learned in designing future certification programs. The paper challenges the idea of the central importance of market benefits as the driving force behind private regimes for environmental and social governance.
February 21, 2013
More than One Way to Skin a Policy
By Andrew Facini, Communications Assistant
Washington Post national environment reporter Juliet Eilperin spoke on the political difficulties of pursuing environmental policy in a seminar titled "Covering Environmental Controversies in a Political Environment" at the Harvard Kennedy School.
AP Photo/Jae C. Hong
July 2012
North American Oil and Gas Reserves: Prospects and Policy
By Jonathan Bailey and Henry Lee, Director, Environment and Natural Resources Program
Expanding estimates of North America’s supply of accessible shale gas, and more recently, shale oil, have been trumpeted in many circles as the most significant energy resource development since the oil boom in Texas in the late 1920s. How large are these resources? What challenges will need to be overcome if their potential is to be realized? How will they impact U.S. energy policy?
To address these questions, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and two of its programs ― the Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Geopolitics of Energy Project ― convened a group of experts from business, government, and academia on May 1, 2012, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The following report summarizes the major issues discussed at this workshop. Since the discussions were off-the-record, no comments are attributed to any individual. Rather, this report attempts to summarize the arguments on all sides of the issues.
AP Photo/Nabil al-Jurani, File
June 2012
"Global Oil Production is Surging: Implications for Prices, Geopolitics, and the Environment"
By Leonardo Maugeri, Roy Family Fellow, Geopolitics of Energy Project
A new study by Belfer Center Geopolitics of Energy researcher Leonardo Maugeri finds that oil production capacity is surging in the United States and several other countries at such a fast pace that global oil output capacity is likely to grow by nearly 20 percent by 2020. This could prompt a plunge or even a collapse in oil prices. The findings by Maugeri, a former oil industry executive who is now a fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, are based on an original field-by-field analysis of the world’s major oil formations and exploration projects.
Photo by Stefanie Le
April 12, 2012
"Film Series Features 'Fierce Green Fire' and Discussion with Filmmaker"
By Stefanie Le
"From the Grand Canyon to climate change, environmental activists have fought for five decades to save the earth’s most vital natural resources for generations to come. Veteran filmmaker Mark Kitchell chronicles the successes and challenges of this global green movement in his far-reaching new film A Fierce Green Fire: The Battle for a Living Planet. The San Francisco director came to Cambridge recently to screen his documentary at the Belfer Center as part of the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center’s Environment & Natural Resources Program’ 2012 Environmental Film Series."
January 2012
"Socio-Economic Sustainability of Biofuel Production in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from a Jatropha Outgrower Model in Rural Tanzania"
By Elisa Portale
This new discussion paper investigates whether an outgrower scheme for a Jatropha production project in Tanzania is capable of developing “socio-economic sustainable outcomes for farmers.” The answer relies on the inclusion of an analysis of the farmers’ material benefits and subjective perceptions about the overall welfare contribution of the outgrower scheme. This research is the first to propose a practical way to operationalize such an analysis and to apply it to a concrete investment project.
AP Photo
July 2011
"Will Electric Cars Transform the U.S. Vehicle Market?"
By Henry Lee, Director, Environment and Natural Resources Program and Grant Lovellette
For the past forty years, United States Presidents have repeatedly called for a reduction in the country's dependence on fossil fuels in general and foreign oil specifically. Some officials advocate the electrification of the passenger vehicle fleet as a path to meeting this goal. The Obama administration has embraced a goal of having one million electric-powered vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015, while others proposed a medium-term goal where electric vehicles would consist of 20% of the passenger vehicle fleet by 2030 — approximately 30 million electric vehicles. The technology itself is not in question; many of the global automobile companies are planning to sell plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and/or battery electric vehicles (BEVs) by 2012. The key question is, will Americans buy them?
