Welcome to ENRP
The Environment and Natural Resources Program (ENRP) is the center of the Harvard Kennedy School's research and outreach on public policy that affects global environmental quality and natural resource management. More>
FEATURED PUBLICATIONS
April 12, 2012
"Film Series Features 'Fierce Green Fire' and Discussion with Filmmaker"
By Stefanie Le
"From the Grand Canyon to climate change, environmental activists have fought for five decades to save the earth’s most vital natural resources for generations to come. Veteran filmmaker Mark Kitchell chronicles the successes and challenges of this global green movement in his far-reaching new film A Fierce Green Fire: The Battle for a Living Planet. The San Francisco director came to Cambridge recently to screen his documentary at the Belfer Center as part of the Harvard Kennedy School Belfer Center’s Environment & Natural Resources Program’ 2012 Environmental Film Series."
April 11, 2012
Natural Gas as a Bridge to the Future
On Monday April 9, the Belfer Center’s Environment and Natural Resources Program (ENRP) hosted a screening and discussion of Hefner’s latest project, a documentary titled “The Grand Energy Transition: Natural Gas – The Bridge To Our Sustainable Future.” Excerpts from the film were shown at the Kennedy School to an audience including Belfer Center Director Graham Allison and Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor Joseph S. Nye.
(See link below for audio podcast of the event)
January 2012
"Socio-Economic Sustainability of Biofuel Production in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from a Jatropha Outgrower Model in Rural Tanzania"
By Elisa Portale
This new discussion paper investigates whether an outgrower scheme for a Jatropha production project in Tanzania is capable of developing “socio-economic sustainable outcomes for farmers.” The answer relies on the inclusion of an analysis of the farmers’ material benefits and subjective perceptions about the overall welfare contribution of the outgrower scheme. This research is the first to propose a practical way to operationalize such an analysis and to apply it to a concrete investment project.
November 2011
The Promise and Problems of Pricing Carbon: Theory and Experience
By Joseph E. Aldy, Faculty Affiliate, Harvard Project on Climate Agreements and Robert N. Stavins, Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government; Member of the Board; Director, Harvard Project on Climate Agreements
Because of the global commons nature of climate change, international cooperation among nations will likely be necessary for meaningful action at the global level. At the same time, it will inevitably be up to the actions of sovereign nations to put in place policies that bring about meaningful reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases. Due to the ubiquity and diversity of emissions of greenhouse gases in most economies, as well as the variation in abatement costs among individual sources, conventional environmental policy approaches, such as uniform technology and performance standards, are unlikely to be sufficient to the task. Therefore, attention has increasingly turned to market-based instruments in the form of carbon-pricing mechanisms. We examine the opportunities and challenges associated with the major options for carbon pricing: carbon taxes, cap-and-trade, emission reduction credits, clean energy standards, and fossil fuel subsidy reductions.
November 2011
Transforming U.S. Energy Innovation
By Laura Diaz Anadon, Associate Director, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program; Director, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group; Adjunct Lecturer in Public Policy, Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom; Co-Principal Investigator, Energy Research, Development, Demonstration, and Deployment (ERD3) Policy Project, Gabriel Chan, Melissa Chan, Former Research Fellow, Energy Research, Development, Demonstration & Deployment Policy Project, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group, January 2009–December 2010, Charles Jones, Associate, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group, Ruud Kempener, Former Research Fellow, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group, 2009–2011, Audrey Lee, Former Research Fellow, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group, 2009–2011, Nathaniel Logar, Research Fellow, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program/Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group and Venkatesh "Venky" Narayanamurti, Benjamin Peirce Professor of Technology and Public Policy; Professor of Physics, Harvard; Director, Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program; Co-Principal Investigator, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group
The United States and the world need a revolution in energy technology—a revolution that would improve the performance of our energy systems to face the challenges ahead. In an intensely competitive and interdependent global landscape, and in the face of large climate risks from ongoing U.S. reliance on a fossil-fuel based energy system, it is important to maintain and expand long-term investments in the energy future of the U.S. even at a time of budget stringency. It is equally necessary to think about how to improve the efficiency of those investments, through strengthening U.S. energy innovation institutions, providing expanded incentives for private-sector innovation, and seizing opportunities where international cooperation can accelerate innovation. The private sector role is key: in the United States the vast majority of the energy system is owned by private enterprises, whose innovation and technology deployment decisions drive much of the country's overall energy systems.
October 2011
Carbon Coalitions: Business, Climate Politics, and the Rise of Emissions Trading
By Jonas Meckling, Research Fellow, The Geopolitics of Energy Project
Over the past decade, carbon trading has emerged as the industrialized world's primary policy response to global climate change despite considerable controversy. With carbon markets worth $144 billion in 2009, carbon trading represents the largest manifestation of the trend toward market-based environmental governance. In Carbon Coalitions, Jonas Meckling presents the first comprehensive study on the rise of carbon trading and the role business played in making this policy instrument a central pillar of global climate governance.
July 2011
"Will Electric Cars Transform the U.S. Vehicle Market?"
By Henry Lee, Director, Environment and Natural Resources Program and Grant Lovellette
For the past forty years, United States Presidents have repeatedly called for a reduction in the country's dependence on fossil fuels in general and foreign oil specifically. Some officials advocate the electrification of the passenger vehicle fleet as a path to meeting this goal. The Obama administration has embraced a goal of having one million electric-powered vehicles on U.S. roads by 2015, while others proposed a medium-term goal where electric vehicles would consist of 20% of the passenger vehicle fleet by 2030 — approximately 30 million electric vehicles. The technology itself is not in question; many of the global automobile companies are planning to sell plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and/or battery electric vehicles (BEVs) by 2012. The key question is, will Americans buy them?