KYOTO PROTOCOL AND POST-KYOTO OPTIONS
AP Photo
July 21, 2009
Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements Receives Additional Funding from Doris Duke Charitable Foundation to Expand Research in Key Areas
Press Release
By Sasha Talcott, Director of Communications and Outreach
As global negotiators prepare to discuss the next international climate agreement in Copenhagen and beyond, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Climate Change Initiative has awarded the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements $600,000 over one year to significantly expand its research and policy outreach.
AP Photo
July 18, 2009
"How to Set Greenhouse Gas Emission Targets for All Countries"
Op-Ed, Vox
By Jeffrey Frankel, James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth
Is a credible multilateral climate change agreement feasible? This column says that such global cooperation is necessary and attempts to address the political hurdles. The proposed emissions reduction plan develops formulas to cap atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at 500 ppm while obeying political constraints regarding cost, fairness, and timing.
AP Photo
July 6, 2009
"Sharing Global CO2 Emission Reductions Among One Billion High Emitters"
Journal Article, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
By Shoibal Chakravarty, Ananth Chikkatur, Associate, Energy Technology Innovation Policy, Heleen de Coninck, Stephen Pacala, Robert Socolow and Massimo Tavoni
The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) created a 2-tier world. It called upon the developed ("Annex I") countries to "take the lead" in reducing carbon emissions, and, under the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities," established no time frame for developing countries to follow. However, a consensus is now emerging in favor of low stabilization targets. These targets cannot be achieved without the participation of developing countries, which today emit about half of global CO2 emissions and whose future emissions increase faster than the emissions of industrialized countries under "business as usual" scenarios.
AP Photo
February 2009
"Driving Carbon Capture and Storage Forward in China"
Journal Article, Energy Procedia, issue 1, volume 1
By Hengwei Liu, Associate, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group and Kelly Sims Gallagher, Senior Associate, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group
Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), as an option in the portfolio of mitigation actions to combat climate change, is expected to have far-reaching implications for China. This paper (1) explores the strategic significance of CCS for China by making an extreme scenario analysis of Chinese power sector in 2030; (2) provides an overview of the recent CCS activities in China; and (3) identifies the major challenges with respect to CCS development in China and put forwards immediate strategies.
AP Photo
June 16, 2009
Harvard Project Participants Join Obama Administration
Highlight
By Robert C. Stowe, Executive Director, Harvard Environmental Economics Program; Manager, Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements
A number of individuals associated with the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements have received appointments in the administration of President Barack Obama. The Project's former Co-Director, Joseph Aldy, is now Special Assistant to the President for Energy and the Environment, reporting to Carol Browner and Lawrence Summers. (Ms. Browner is Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change.) Professor Summers (on leave from Harvard) himself was a member of the Harvard Project's Faculty Steering Committee before becoming Director of the National Economic Council in the White House and Assistant to the President for Economic Policy. Jody Freeman, also a former member of the Harvard Project's Faculty Steering Committee and a Harvard Law School Professor (on leave of absence), is now Counselor for Energy and Climate in the White House, reporting to Carol Browner.
AP Photo
June 4, 2009
Bonn Climate Negotiations: From the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements
Announcement
By Sasha Talcott, Director of Communications and Outreach and Robert C. Stowe, Executive Director, Harvard Environmental Economics Program; Manager, Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements
The current negotiations in Bonn, Germany, mark a major step on the road to the next international climate agreement. With the negotiating text now being discussed, the Harvard Project has a wide array of research papers and policy ideas, each condensed into a two-page summary, which may be useful to those working on these issues. We have chosen to highlight some of those most relevant to the Bonn negotiating agenda.
Belfer Center Photo
Summer 2009
"A Proposed Global Climate Policy Architecture"
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By Jeffrey Frankel, James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth
A Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will meet in Copenhagen in December to try to decide a successor regime to the Kyoto Protocol. This study offers a proposal that builds on the foundations of Kyoto, in that it accepts the framework of national targets for emissions and tradable permits. But it attempts to solve the most serious deficiencies of that agreement: the need for long-term targets, the absence of participation by the United States and developing countries, and the incentive for countries to fail to abide by their commitments. Although there are many ideas to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, the existing proposals are typically based on just one or two out of the following three factors: science (e.g., capping global concentrations at 450 ppm) or equity (equal emissions per capita across countries) or economics (weighing the economic costs of aggressive short-term cuts against the long-term environmental benefits). The plan for emissions reductions proposed in this paper is more practical because it is based heavily on politics, in addition to those three considerations.
Photo by Lindsay Lecky
May 18, 2009
"New York Business Roundtable: Key Takeaways"
Event Summary
By Sasha Talcott, Director of Communications and Outreach
With the U.S. Congress currently debating whether and how to establish a domestic cap-and-trade system to address climate change, the outcome of those discussions is critical to global climate negotiations in Copenhagen and beyond, according to a roundtable discussion on post-Kyoto climate policy hosted by Barclays Capital on April 30, 2009, with insights from the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements.
The business roundtable in New York, which included participants from a range of industries and key government officials, looked at the implications of U.S. domestic climate policy for the international process, the current state of the Waxman-Markey bill in the U.S. Congress, and the future of national and global carbon markets.
May 2009
"Acting in Time on Climate Change"
Book Chapter
By Kelly Sims Gallagher, Senior Associate, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group
"This chapter expolres a number of related questions: How much time do we have to act? How much climate change is virtually inevitable? What are the consequences of procrastination? And finally, what is the appropriate role for governments wishing to act in time to reduce the threat of climate change? In addition, the reality of current emissions and policy responses is explored in some detail for the two biggest emitters in the world: the United States and China."
May 2009
"Technology and International Climate Policy"
Discussion Paper
By Leon Clarke, Kate Calvin, James A. Edmonds, Page Kyle and Marshall Wise
This paper explores the interactions of international policy architecture and technology availability on the limitation of atmospheric CO2 concentrations to 500 ppm in the year 2095. We find that technology is even more important to reducing the costs of emissions mitigation when international policy structures deviate from immediate and full participation. We also find that the international diffusion of climate technology may be as or more important to domestic mitigation cost containment as domestic technology diffusion. We observe that near-term carbon prices reflect in a very direct way expectations about technology a half century and more into the future. We find that the policy architecture has a relatively modest effect on global emissions limitation pathways when compared with the impact of technology availability and observe that more rapid technology improvements reduce the relative influence of the policy architecture. Finally, we consider the implications combining CO2 capture and storage technology with bioenergy production, namely electricity production with negative carbon emissions.
