February 10, 2018
Chart of the Week #6: Gas Is Too Damn Cheap
Fuel subsidies are bad for the planet, expensive, and often regressive. With new, high-frequency price data researchers explore why they’re also so hard to kill.
Views from the Center
March 29, 2017
Trump’s Retrogressive Executive Order on Climate Change: A Development Perspective in Three Charts
On Tuesday the Trump Administration dropped a long-feared executive order on climate change. There’s no sugarcoating it—this order is an attempted assault by the administration on the climate we all depend on, the world’s poorest people most of all. Nevertheless, just how bad things get depends not just on vigorous opposition to these moves within the US, but more and more on other countries.
March 1, 2017
Can We Have Our Forests and Burn Them Too?
The biomass energy industry, US Senators, and the FAO would have you think that burning wood to produce electricity is a good idea for the climate. Think again.
February 15, 2017
A Corporate Giant’s Role in Reducing Climate Change and Promoting Development: A Conversation with Unilever’s Paul Polman
Unilever is the world’s single largest end-user of palm oil, purchasing nearly 3 percent of global palm oil production. Whilst we can not do everything alone , with this scale comes responsibility—to make sure that our supply chains are not driving tropical deforestation, and to tackle endemic social issues such as forced labour and the protection of indigenous people.
December 22, 2016
The Competition is Heating up for Climate Leaders
A Trump administration and a Republican-controlled Congress may spell hard times for progressive climate action at a national and international level. But emerging economies are increasingly realizing their own stake in protecting their populations from climate change while also capitalizing on clean energy technology and manufacturing.
December 15, 2016
Lone Star Republic to Define US Energy Policy
President-elect Donald Trump has just named former Texas Governor Rick Perry to lead the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Let us look to the energy policies of his home state which he governed from 2000 to 2015 to predict DOE’s role in the Trump administration.
October 24, 2016
A Win for India is a Win for the World: Why the United States Needs to Help India Clean up Its Coal
The Obama Administration has left an indelible impact on domestic energy policy and global climate policy. Policies driving technological innovation—in what critics have dubbed the “war on coal”—are helping the United States transition its energy system to one that is cleaner and more efficient. While the administration touts the growth of clean energy deployment in the United States at international fora, it should not limit its engagement with foreign countries on fossil energy—especially when the climate gains could be large.
June 7, 2016
Oxfam America: Poor Countries Should Get to Sell the Remaining Fossil Fuels
Reducing fossil fuel emissions to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius or less means that a huge amount of proven fossil fuel reserves will need to stay in the ground. A new Oxfam America Research Backgrounder by Professor Simon Caney of Oxford rightly proposes that, in considering which assets will be “stranded” (left in the ground), priority for extracting these fossil fuels should somehow be given to the poorest countries/people. But while poor countries should get priority when it comes to selling fossil fuels, when it comes to using them, they should be viewed as an energy source of last resort, after alternatives have been seriously explored.
November 1, 2013
Is the US Announcement on Coal a Major Policy Shift? Not So Much
Is the US taking a more restrictive stance toward coal projects in the multilateral development banks (MDBs)? Certainly, this press release from the US Treasury and subsequent press coverage would suggest a major policy shift. Technically, the Treasury’s announcement does point pretty clearly to more restrictiveness. But practically speaking?
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