Clean energy

Russia’s war on Ukraine has cast a shadow over this week’s meetings of world leaders at the G-20 summit in Bali and the United Nations climate change conference in Egypt. The war has dramatically disrupted energy markets the world over, leaving many countries vulnerable to price spikes amid supply shortages. Europe, worried about keeping the heat on through winter, is outbidding poor countries for natural gas, even paying premiums to reroute tanker ships after Russia cut off most of its usual natural gas supply. Some countries are restarting coal-fired power plants. Others are looking for ways to expand fossil fuel production, including new projects in Africa. These actions are a long way from the countries’ pledges just a year ago to rein in fossil fuels, and they’re likely to further increase greenhouse gas emissions, at least temporarily. But will the war and the economic turmoil prevent the world from meeting the Paris climate agreement’s lon...

The planet is heating up as greenhouse gas emissions rise, contributing to extreme heat waves and once-unimaginable flooding. Yet despite the risks, countries’ policies are not on track to keep global warming in check. The problem isn’t a lack of technology. The International Energy Agency recently released a detailed analysis of the clean energy technology needed to lower greenhouse gas emissions to net zero globally by 2050. What’s needed, the IEA says, is significant government support to boost solar and wind power, electric vehicles, heat pumps and a variety of other technologies for a rapid energy transition. One politically popular tool for providing that government support is the subsidy. The U.S. government’s new Inflation Reduction Act is a multibillion-dollar example, packed with financial incentives to encourage people to buy electric vehicles, solar panels and more. But just how big do governments’ clean energy subsidies need to be to...

The United States is in the midst of the biggest boom in clean energy manufacturing investments in history, spurred by laws like the bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act. These laws have leveraged billions of dollars in government support to drive private sector investments in clean energy supply chains across the country. For several years, one of us, Jay Turner, and his students at Wellesley College have been tracking clean energy investments in the U.S. and sharing the data at The Big Green Machine website. That research shows that companies have announced 225 projects, totaling US$127 billion in investment, and more than 131,000 new jobs since the Inflation Reduction Act became law in 2022. You may have seen news stories that said these projects are at risk of failure or significant delays. In August 2024, the Financial Times reported that 40% of more than 100 projects it evaluated were delayed. These included battery manufacturi...

As the U.S. prepares for another Trump administration, one area unambiguously in the incoming president’s crosshairs is climate policy. Although he has not released an official climate agenda, Donald Trump’s playbook from his last stint in the Oval Office and his frequent complaints about clean energy offer some clues to what’s ahead. Exiting the Paris climate agreement Less than six months into his first presidency, Trump in 2017 formally announced that he was withdrawing the United States from the Paris climate accord – the 2015 international agreement signed by nearly every country as a pledge to work toward keeping rising temperatures and other impacts of climate change in check. This time, a greater but underappreciated risk is that Trump will not stop at the Paris Agreement. Trump attends a session of the United Nations Climate Action Summit in 2019. When he announced he would pull the U.S. out of the Pari...

Carbon offsets have become big business as more companies make promises to protect the climate but can’t meet the goals on their own. When a company buys carbon offsets, it pays a project elsewhere to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on its behalf – by planting trees, for example, or generating renewable energy. The idea is that reducing greenhouse gas emissions anywhere pays off for the global climate. But not all offsets have the same value. There is growing skepticism about many of the offsets sold on voluntary carbon markets. In contrast to compliance markets, where companies buy and sell a limited number of allowances that are issued by regulators, these voluntary carbon markets have few rules that can be enforced consistently. Investigations have found that many voluntary offset projects, forest management projects in particular, have done little to benefit the climate despite their claims. I specialize in sustainable finance and corporate governance. My collea...