HEEP Hosts Enel CEO Francesco Starace at Harvard Kennedy School

January 05, 2015

The Harvard Environmental Economics Program (HEEP) hosted Francesco Starace, the Chief Executive Officer and General Manager of Enel SpA, at the Harvard Kennedy School on December 1-3, 2014. As part of his visit, Mr. Starace gave a public talk titled “Meeting tomorrow’s energy challenges: Why technology will define our energy future." He noted that the cost of some renewable-energy technologies is decreasing rapidly, and the corresponding penetration of renewables into energy markets is increasing rapidly. Growth of renewable capacity can significantly reduce greenhouse-gas emissions and other air pollutants.

Mr. Starace has been the CEO and General Manager of the Enel Group—a global energy company based in Italy, with extensive operations in Europe, North America, and Latin America—since May 2014. Between 2008 and 2014, he was the CEO of Enel’s renewable energy division, Enel Green Power, which he led to its successful IPO in 2010.

Harvard Kennedy School Dean David Ellwood (right) and Professor Robert Stavins (left) greet Enel CEO Francesco Starace (center) during his visit to campus.
Photo credit: Bryan Galcik

Enel and the affiliated Enel Foundation have provided support for HEEP through the Enel Endowment for Environmental Economics at Harvard University and through various project-related grants and gifts from the Foundation. The funding has supported such projects as side-event panels hosted by HEEP’s Harvard Project on Climate Agreements in the Conferences of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Doha, Qatar; Warsaw, Poland; and Lima, Peru in late 2012, 2013, and 2014 respectively. The Harvard Project has released a series of related discussion papers as background to these events, as follows:

Michaelowa, Axel. "Can New Market Mechanisms Mobilize Emissions Reductions from the Private Sector?" Discussion Paper ES 2012-1. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, November 2012.
Ranson, Matthew, and Robert Stavins. "Linkage of Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Systems: Learning from Experience." Discussion Paper ES 2013-2. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, November 2013.
Gerarden, Todd, Richard Newell, Robert Stavins, and Robert Stowe. "An Assessment of the Energy-Efficiency Gap and Its Implications for Climate-Change Policy." Discussion Paper ES 2014-3. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Project on Climate Agreements, November 2014.