Professor Robert N. Stavins speaks to participants after the Harvard Project–sponsored side-event at the COP in Poznan, Poland, Dec. 2008.
Photo by Robert C. Stowe

"Robert Stavins Named to the Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission"

Stavins, a Harvard Kennedy School Professor, Will Bring Economic and Public Policy Expertise

Press Release, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

May 13, 2009

Related: Robert N. Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government; Member of the Board; Director, Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements

Belfer Center Programs or Projects: Environment and Natural Resources; Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements

Cambridge, Mass. — Robert Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School and a member of the Board of Directors at the school's Belfer Center, has been appointed to a new position in the Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee at the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Stavins, who is director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program and the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements, has a strong research background in environmental economics and policy and has published in a variety of books and journals. He directed the bipartisan Project 88, supported by Senators Tim Wirth and John Heinz, which proposed the use of a market-based cap-and-trade system to mitigate the problem of "acid rain." The concept ultimately was written into the Clean Air Act of 1990 and proved so successful that it became a basis for other emissions-trading schemes around the world.

Stavins, whose work at Harvard Kennedy School includes directing graduate studies for the doctoral programs in public policy and in political economy and government and co-chairing the school's joint degree programs with Harvard Business School, joins the newly expanded Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee, which includes 11 new experts on environmental markets. This newly expanded group will focus for the first time on carbon dioxide and other emissions trading markets. Stavins will be part of a committee that strives to examine energy markets and review pending legislation on Capitol Hill to regulate the role of speculators in commodity markets.

According to Bart Chilton, the committee's chair and CFTC Commissioner, "The CFTC has a longstanding history of federal regulation and derivatives trading — from monitoring exchange activity and ensuring financial responsibility, to carrying out disciplinary and enforcement actions — and we need to ensure we are prepared to address the trading of carbon. These could be the biggest commodity markets in years and the agency needs to be prepared to protect these markets and consumers alike from fraud, abuse and manipulation."

For more information about this publication please contact the Belfer Center Communications Office at 617-495-9858.

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