2019

Cover of EEEAC Report - Industrial smokestacks with smoke coming from the tops

Economists find EPA proposal to undermine protections from power-plant mercury emissions is based on incomplete data and faulty analysis

December 19, 2019

LOS ANGELES – Environmental economists from Harvard, Yale, and other leading research institutions say an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposal that would eventually allow more mercury pollution from power plants relies on a cost-benefit analysis that is fatally flawed. In a new report, the economists detail how the EPA’s calculations inappropriately fail to consider how...

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Tree with blue sky background

New Essay Examines 50 Years of Environmental Protection Policy Evolution

November 8, 2019

Doug Gavel
As we approach the 50th anniversary of the passage of the U.S. Clean Air Act, one of the most consequential environmental laws ever passed by Congress, today’s polarized politics in Washington seemingly precludes (?) the possibility of any similar bipartisan legislation anytime soon. In a new essay published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Harvard Kennedy School Professor...

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Lord Nicholas Stern

Climate Change Economist Stresses Urgency of Action in Harvard Lecture

October 21, 2019

By Doug Gavel
One of the world’s most prominent climate change economists isn’t backing away from his guarded optimism about the future. Lord Nicholas Stern, the I.G. Patel Professor of Economics and Government and Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and Environment at the London School of Economics, told hundreds who gathered at the Geological Lecture Hall...

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Cover Art

How to solve the ‘double counting’ problem: New paper outlines strategy for COP-25 negotiators

October 11, 2019

By Doug Gavel:
CAMBRIDGE MA – With negotiators from more than 100 countries preparing to gather in Madrid, Spain for the 25th annual international climate conference in December, attention is focusing on how to build consensus for the accurate accounting of emission reductions. So-called “double counting,” which occurs when two or more parties claim credit for the same emission reductions, could undermine the integrity of the historic...

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Marty Weitzman

HEEP Remembers Martin Weitzman for his Extraordinary Contributions to Environmental Economics

August 29, 2019

Faculty, scholars, and staff at the Harvard Environmental Economics Program (HEEP) – with economists and other scholars around the world – are deeply saddened by the loss of Martin L. Weitzman, recently retired professor of economics at Harvard University, who died unexpectedly on August 27, 2019. ... Read more about HEEP Remembers Martin Weitzman for his Extraordinary Contributions to Environmental Economics