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UCLA Law School Professor Praises the Biden Administration’s Climate Policies in Newest Episode of “Environmental Insights”

March 5, 2024

CAMBRIDGE MA. – UCLA Law School Professor Kimberly Clausing, who served in the Biden Administration, continues to give it high praise for its climate policies in the newest episode of “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.”... Read more about UCLA Law School Professor Praises the Biden Administration’s Climate Policies in Newest Episode of “Environmental Insights”

Richard Zeckhauser headshot

Eminent Harvard Economist Richard Zeckhauser Argues for More Climate Adaptation Efforts in Newest Episode of “Environmental Insights”

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Learn about HEEP

HEEP is a university-wide initiative addressing today's complex environmental challenges and is based in the Harvard Kennedy School’s Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. Learn more by reading director Robert Stavins' welcome message.

Environmental Insights Podcast

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Recent Publications

Bistline, John, Kimberly A. Clausing, Neil Mehrotra, James H. Stock, and Catherine Wolfram. “Climate Policy Reform Options in 2025,” 2024. Publisher's VersionAbstract
With the expiration of many tax cuts and unmet climate targets, 2025 could be a crucial year for climate policy in the United States. Using an integrated model of energy supply and demand, this paper aims to assess climate policies that the U.S. federal government may consider in 2025 and to evaluate emissions reductions, fiscal costs and revenues, and household energy expenditures across a range of policy scenarios. Model results suggest that the emissions reductions of the Inflation Reduction Act are significantly augmented under scenarios that add a modest carbon fee or, to a lesser extent, that implement a clean electricity standard in the power sector. Second, net fiscal costs can be substantially reduced in scenarios that include a carbon fee, especially if fossil fuel exports are taxed. Third, expanding the IRA tax credits yields modest additional emissions reductions with higher fiscal costs. Finally, although none of the policy combinations across these scenarios achieve the U.S. target of a 50-52% economy-wide emissions reduction by 2030 from 2005 levels, the carbon fee and clean electricity standard scenarios achieve these levels between 2030 and 2035.
Bilal, Adrien, and Esteban Rossi-Hansberg. “Anticipating Climate Change Across the United States.” Harvard Environmental Economics Program, no. dp\_94 (2023): 23-94.Abstract
We evaluate how anticipation and adaptation shape the aggregate and local costs of climate change. We develop a dynamic spatial model of the U.S. economy and its 3,143 counties that features costly forward-looking migration and capital investment decisions. Recent methodological advances that leverage the `Master Equation' representation of the economy make the model tractable. We estimate the county-level impact of severe storms and heat waves over the 20th century on local income, population, and investment. The estimated impact of storms matches that of capital depreciation shocks in the model, while heat waves resemble combined amenity and productivity shocks. We then estimate migration and investment elasticities, as well as the structural damage functions, by matching these reduced-form results in our framework. Our findings show, first, that the impact of climate on capital depreciation magnifies the U.S. aggregate welfare costs of climate change twofold to nearly 5in 2023 under a business-as-usual warming scenario. Second, anticipation of future climate damages amplifies climate-induced worker and investment mobility, as workers and capitalists foresee the slow build-up of climate change. Third, migration reduces substantially the spatial variance in the welfare impact of climate change. Although both anticipation and migration are important for local impacts, their effect on aggregate U.S. losses from climate change is small.
Aldy, Joseph E.Learning How to Build Back Better through Clean Energy Policy Evaluation,” 2022, dp\_93.Abstract

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act authorized and appropriated unprecedented spending and tax expenditures to decarbonize the American economy. In the spirit of “build back better,” this paper examines how integrating evaluation in the design and implementation of these new clean energy policies can facilitate the learning necessary for policymakers to make policy better over time. It draws lessons from two case studies: (1) on institutionalizing evaluation based on the experience with regulatory review, and (2) on conducting evaluation based on the research literature assessing the 2009 Recovery Act’s clean energy programs. The paper identifies in recent legislation the programs and their characteristics amenable to various evaluation methodologies. The paper closes with recommendations for a clean energy program evaluation framework that would enable implementation of climate-oriented learning agendas under the Evidence-Based Policymaking Act.

Keywords: program evaluation, learning agendas, renewable energy, energy efficiency

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News from the Harvard Project on Climate Agreements

HPCA Conversations on Climate Change and Energy Policy

The Harvard Project on Climate Agreements is conducting a series of virtual forums addressing key issues in climate-change and related energy policy. Each forum will feature an expert guest and will be moderated by Robert Stavins, Director of the Harvard Project. 

We hope you can join us!

Next Scheduled Event: 

TBD

To access recordings and transcripts of past events, please go to the HPCA Conversations Series webpage.

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