Category: Energy Economics

Key Takeaways from COP30 in Belém

The 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in Belém, Brazil, concluded last week, and so – as I have done every year for about 20 years, I will offer my personal views about major takeaways from COP30.

Let’s begin by recognizing that the “Belém Package” was adopted, in which 195 Parties approved a broad set of nearly 30 individual decisions that cover many elements of international climate change policy going forward.

But what about specifics?  As always, there’s good news and bad news.  This year, I will begin with what I think of as disappointments and problematic outcomes, and then I will turn to one potentially very important outcome, which I don’t think has been sufficiently covered by much of the news media.

Disappointments and Problematic Outcomes

A Missing Statement about Phasing Out Fossil Fuels       

As was the case with COP29 post-mortems last year, the press has focused in its COP30 coverage on the conference’s final statement (or lack thereof) regarding the future of fossil fuels.  A year ago, I wrote at this blog about why such focus on what is at best a non-binding resolution was misplaced and given too much attention (What Happened at COP29 in Baku?, November 29, 2024).  This year, attention has again been focused unduly on the fact that the COP’s closing statement did not go beyond or even explicitly endorse the CO28 statement about “transitioning away from fossil fuels”, about which I also wrote at this blog (What Really Happened at COP-28 in Dubai, December 15, 2023).

So, there’s been abundant hand-wringing that the final COP30 language was weaker than many had hoped, and certainly did not include a formal fossil-fuel phase-out roadmap.  I won’t argue that such symbolic pronouncements, when made, are irrelevant, but the fact remains that these statements are only aspirational, and not tied in any meaningful way to the heart of the Paris Agreement’s implementation, namely the 195 Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

What Happened to the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF)?

On November 6, 2025, the COP President, André Corrêa do Lago, formally launched this initiative to pay for tropical countries to conserve standing forests.  With support from Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, expectations were high, with the ultimate target being a fund of $125 billion.  But the funding committed at COP 30, somewhat less than $7 billion, was less than expected.

The Just Transition Mechanism

A new “Belém Action Mechanism for Just Transition” is intended to provide a structured, multilateral framework to manage the transition from carbon-intensive economies to low-carbon economies in a just, equitable, inclusive way that protects workers, communities, and vulnerable populations. This is an important issue, because not only does climate change bring about economic damages, but so do climate change policies.  

The Belém text seems to refer only to developing countries, but since the time of COP3 in 1997 (where the Kyoto Protocol as adopted), the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) — a coalition of oil-exporting Arab states — has pushed for compensation for economic losses to the oil trade triggered by mitigation policies.  So, this new mechanism could have some significant unintended consequences.

The Global Implementation Accelerator

This was launched in Belém to quickly start high-impact, short-term climate actions, such as for reducing methane emission and implementing nature-based carbon removal. This is clearly meritorious, but what will the “Accelerator” actually do?  It is fundamentally voluntary, and requires significant finance.  So, it remains little more than a statement of intentions, unless this leads to national plans which are anchored in clear paths for finance & implementation.

Tripling Adaptation Finance

Countries committed in Belém to triple adaptation finance by 2035 to help vulnerable nations.  This means raising the adaptation finance target from roughly $40 billion/year (set in 2021) to about $120 billion per year by 2035.  The Paris Agreement is largely about mitigation (via the NDCs), and recently an ex post fund for Loss and Damage was launched.  But between these is the need for adaptation (It’s Not Too Soon to Take Climate Change Adaptation Seriously, November 7, 2021).  So the increased attention is merited, but there is no indication of a credible pathway that would unlock private capital and innovation, which is surely needed.

A Potentially Very Important Outcome

The negotiators in Belém launched a “Trade-Climate Dialogue” with a two-year work program on how international trade can support equitable climate action.  This, in my judgement, is potentially very important, partly because of the topic and partly because an actual program of work is specified for the countries to undertake.

A few days ago, I discussed this (plus the four concerns I’ve outlined above) with an excellent journalist from Newsweek – Jeff Young, the magazine’s Environment and Sustainability Editor.  I thought that some of my responses might make it into the article he was intending to write about CO30 outcomes, but it turned out that he published what is essentially an interview (not about my four concerns with COP30, but exclusively focused on the “potentially very important outcome” of COP30.  So, rather than summarizing or revising his prose and my responses to his questions, I am simply offering below Jeff Young’s article, which I hope you’ll find of interest.

Harvard Economist Cites ‘Important’ COP30 Development on Climate and Trade

Nov 25, 2025

By Jeff Young

Environment and Sustainability Editor

The COP30 climate talks launched two weeks ago amid high expectations for progress in Belém, Brazil. After 10 years of the Paris Climate Agreement, new national commitments to cut greenhouse gases were due and momentum was building for an international plan to phase out the world’s use of fossil fuels.

Further, the COP30 setting at the mouth of the Amazon River stressed the importance of forests and nature conservation in the climate fight, and Brazil was set to unveil a new way to fund forest protections.

But early signs of progress at the talks seemed to bog down in the tropical heat. By the time negotiators took up the idea of a “road map” to phase out fossil fuels, a fire in the venue forced a temporary evacuation and offered fitting symbolism for a COP going down in flames.

On Saturday, the talks closed with mixed results at best: financing for forests grew but not to the hoped-for levels; national plans still came short of the Paris target; and the COP30 final document did not call for new action to end fossil fuels.

“My own judgment is that the outcomes were a combination of disappointing, problematic and potentially important,” Harvard economist and veteran COP observer Robert Stavins told Newsweek. Stavins directs both the Harvard Environmental Economics Program and the school’s Project on Climate Agreements and he has attended close to 20 of the annual United Nations climate gatherings.

Stavins said that with the Trump administration abandoning the Paris Agreement and ignoring COP30 (for the first time in COP history, the U.S. did not send an official delegation), the realistic expectations for a strong outcome were low.

However, he said, COP30 produced a “potentially important” development on global trade and climate, a relatively new topic in the COP process.

The European Union has tied trade to climate action with the adoption of the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM), a means of pricing the greenhouse gas emissions involved in the manufacturing of many products the E.U. imports. In effect, CBAM is a CO2 tariff on carbon-intensive products, including iron and steel, aluminum, cement, fertilizers, hydrogen, and electricity.

In this interview, edited for length and clarity, Stavins said a dialogue on trade launched at COP30 could serve to overcome some objections to the CBAM and encourage other countries to take a similar approach to pricing carbon pollution.

Newsweek: Tell me about what you found “potentially important” coming out of COP30.

Robert Stavins: They established what is called a trade and climate dialogue. Obviously, the relationship between international trade and climate change is extremely important and one can view it in lots of ways. Some countries are very hostile towards the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism in the European Union and feel that it’s a way of keeping developing countries mired in poverty through what is essentially environmental protectionism.

The Europeans obviously view it as both necessary for establishing a level playing field but also as a way of inducing other countries to take on domestic carbon pricing mechanisms in order to escape the tariff when they export those specific bulk products: iron and steel and cement, aluminum, a few others, into the European Union.

What’s striking is that they agreed to start a 2-year work program on how international trade can support equitable climate action. Well, once they start a program, then they have to meet and talk about it, they have to put things on paper, so this one actually does have a bit of meat.

There was interest expressed from the Brazilian presidency going into the COP in the notion of something broader than the CBAM:  A number of countries putting in place carbon pricing domestic mechanisms—whether it’s a carbon tax or auctioned allowances under cap and trade—keeping the revenue and then putting in place essentially trade barriers like the CBAM on non-participating countries. In other words, expanding the CBAM into something like a carbon pricing club.

[For this blog essay, let me add that I am referring above to the “Open Coalition on Compliance Carbon Markets,” proposed by Brazil’s Finance Ministry ahead of COP30, initially with 11 supporting parties (Brazil, China, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Chile, Germany, Mexico, Armenia, Zambia, and France), and having since expanded to 18 parties.  More to the point, a very promising potential avenue forward for such a coalition (club) is provided by a recent proposal from the Global Climate Policy Project at Harvard and MIT, namely “Building a Climate Coalition: Aligning Carbon Pricing, Trade, and Development,” which I’m pleased to say is the focus of my upcoming podcast episode (and related blog essay) featuring Professor Katherine Wolfram of the MIT-Sloan School of Management.]

Newsweek: That reminds me that Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the environment committee, was the sole federal U.S. representative there in Belém and this was one of his top talking points. He called the CBAM “a lifeboat” for climate safety, and I’m wondering if you agree with that assessment.

Stavins: I think it is. I originally saw it as an understandable reaction, trying to make European industry happy, so that they wouldn’t be at a competitive disadvantage. But I was very skeptical of the possibility of it actually inducing other countries to put in place carbon pricing mechanisms. But I was wrong, because in fact other countries are in that process.

Turkey has been completely upfront about the fact that they’re developing a carbon price mechanism for the explicit purpose of not having to pay the CBAM. And I can tell you that I think it’s five other countries that are also developing plans—I can’t comment on some because I’ve been working with them, so it’s confidential. So, to me, that is a potentially very promising development, but I say potentially because, you know, there are a lot of caveats.

Newsweek: One of the caveats there might be what the Trump administration will do in response to this.

Stavins: Obviously, tariffs have been essential to the first ten months of the Trump administration’s policies. Leading up to COP30, the Trump administration tried with several other countries to get them to back down on their NDCs [national commitments to cut CO2 emissions]. And the way they did it was to say, you know and we’ll look upon you favorably in terms of international trade if you do. That failed.

So rather than using trade barriers in a positive way, which I think is what the CBAM is, the Trump administration has been using them in regards to climate change in a negative way.

Newsweek: How big a deal was it that the U.S. wasn’t there? Did that create a sort of leadership void, and did others seek to fill that? I’m thinking of China in particular.

Stavins: The answer is yes. The overall effect is a change of mood. Leading up to the Paris Agreement, the U.S. and China were partners—we never would have gotten the Paris Agreement otherwise.

China now is happy to emerge into sole leadership. China now is emerging and in broader terms than just climate, it is in terms of all kinds of soft power as the U.S. pulls back with the cancelling of USAID and so much else.

Newsweek: What do you think of the future of the COP process itself? There are growing calls for reform to the process—do you see it changing, and do you think it remains relevant?

Stavins: I don’t see it going away because it has a huge constituency. Developing countries don’t walk out on it because they don’t want to jeopardize the process and see something like the G20 take over. So, for that reason, my opinion is that we will continue to have it for quite some time. It will become irrelevant only as an alternative parallel to it emerges and that could be what I described before but it might be something else, but I think it’s going to be with us for a while.

One last thing I’ll say is I would be more optimistic about COP31 in Turkey. Turkey is a very interesting place, they are a real bridge between Europe and Asia, obviously, and Australia is going to have some element of the [COP] presidency. Most importantly, I don’t think expectations are going to be high, and everything in life, whether it’s personal, institutional or political, is relative to expectations.

Share

A Key Political Advisor Reflects on Progress and Prospects for Climate Policy

In my monthly podcast series, “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program” (produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program), I’ve had the pleasure of engaging in conversations with individuals who have played very important roles in environmental and climate change policy, whether from within academia, government, NGOs, or private industry.  My most recent guest was certainly no exception, because I was joined by John Podesta, who has held numerous important positions in the U.S. government, starting with leading staff positions in the U.S. Senate, and then – more prominently – in the White House, serving in key roles under three U.S. presidents:  Clinton, Obama, and Biden.  Along the way, he founded the Center for American Progress and served as its first President and CEO.

Since my podcast and this blog are focused exclusively on environmental and energy policy, I should note up front that among his many government positions, he served as Senior Advisor to President Biden where he oversaw more than $750 billion in clean-energy investments under the Inflation Reduction Act, and then succeeded John Kerry as U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.  I hope you will listen to our conversation here.

In the podcast, John Podesta shares his insights on climate policy, the challenges of securing bipartisan support, and the global push toward clean energy.  He begins with some reflections on the Inflation Reduction Act:

“It was an investment-led strategy, private sector-led, although government-enabled strategy to boost investment, innovation, job creation, cost reductions, and it covered every emitting sector of the economy, unlike efforts in the past that really just focused on power production or transportation when very little attention was being paid to the emissions that [were] the result of land use or industrial process,” he remarks. “The world saw [the IRA] as the United States really getting in the game in a very positive way… Even our European colleagues… did not see this as a zero-sum game and we thought that the improvements, the innovations, the ability to create a green hydrogen industry was going to benefit the world, including Europe and European companies.”

John maintains that the IRA also served U.S. international relations interests in important ways:

“It gave us a way to partner with others who were also worried about economic domination in these [clean energy] sectors, that they would be left out and left behind, and notwithstanding that some cheap Chinese clean technology was flooding the market,” he says. “It was kind of undermining domestic investment in places like Brazil, like India. And they saw the U.S. as a reliable partner in saying that we need to… share a vision, but we also need to attend to our own domestic populations and make sure we’re building strong economies.”

But Podesta goes on to describe how everything changed when the Trump administration came to power, which he characterizes as undermining much of the climate progress that had been made during the Obama and Biden administrations.

“We’re in a period of under President Trump with ideology that is definitely hostile to the development of the clean energy economy and indeed in dealing with climate change… I sometimes describe this administration as the Empire Strikes Back. We saw a huge boost in investment in clean technology, and now we’re seeing reversal of that with a substantial loss of jobs, prices rising. And it’s interesting because it’s happening in the middle of the first time in a generation… of increasing demand for electricity,” he says “We see this booming demand for electricity, and [Trump has] taken off the table the cheapest, cleanest, reliable, and deployable sources of energy. Maybe the iconic example is the war we see on offshore wind in the Northeast and New England.”

On the upside, Podesta remarks, international efforts to reduce emissions and address climate change are moving in the right direction.

“The overall picture across the globe is to spur investment innovation in these technologies as opposed to polluting fossil fuels and that is happening virtually everywhere except the United States… and a couple of others who are resisting that trend. But I think at a political level, and certainly at a technical and scientific level, the damage that is resulting from a warming planet is obvious and people are trying to do something about it,” he says. “Whether that’s in the big economies in Europe or the big economies in Asia, the push is towards trying to develop cleaner resources and less polluting resources, trying to invest in adaptation and resilience, trying to find a way to get financial flows going to support that transition.”

For this and much more, please listen to my complete podcast conversation with John Podesta, the 70th episode over the past five years of the Environmental Insights series, with future episodes scheduled to drop each month.  You can find a transcript of our conversation at the website of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.  Previous episodes have featured conversations with:

  • Gina McCarthy, former Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
  • Nick Stern of the London School of Economics discussing his career, British politics, and efforts to combat climate change
  • Andrei Marcu, founder and executive director of the European Roundtable on Climate Change and Sustainable Transition
  • Paul Watkinson, Chair of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
  • Jos Delbeke, professor at the European University Institute in Florence and at the KU Leuven in Belgium, and formerly Director-General of the European Commission’s DG Climate Action
  • David Keith, professor at Harvard and a leading authority on geoengineering
  • Joe Aldy, professor of the practice of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School, with considerable experience working on climate change policy issues in the U.S. government
  • Scott Barrett,  professor of natural resource economics at Columbia University, and an authority on infectious disease policy
  • Rebecca Henderson, John and Natty McArthur University Professor at Harvard University, and founding co-director of the Business and Environment Initiative at Harvard Business School.
  • Sue Biniaz, who was the lead climate lawyer and a lead climate negotiator for the United States from 1989 until early 2017.
  • Richard Schmalensee, the Howard W. Johnson Professor of Management, and Professor of Economics Emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  • Kelley Kizier, Associate Vice President for International Climate at the Environmental Defense Fund.
  • David Hone, Chief Climate Change Adviser, Shell International.
  • Vicky Bailey, 30 years of experience in corporate and government positions in the energy sector. 
  • David Victor, professor of international relations at the University of California, San Diego.
  • Lisa Friedman, reporter on the climate desk at the The New York Times.
  • Coral Davenport, who covers energy and environmental policy for The New York Times from Washington.
  • Spencer Dale, BP Group Chief Economist.
  • Richard Revesz, professor at the NYU School of Law.
  • Daniel Esty, Hillhouse Professor of Environment and Law at Yale University. 
  • William Hogan, Raymond Plank Research Professor of Global Energy Policy at Harvard.
  • Jody Freeman, Archibald Cox Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.
  • John Graham, Dean Emeritus, Paul O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University.
  • Gernot Wagner, Clinical Associate Professor at New York University.
  • John Holdren, Research Professor, Harvard Kennedy School.
  • Larry Goulder, Shuzo Nishihara Professor of Environmental and Resource Economics, Stanford University.
  • Suzi Kerr, Chief Economist, Environmental Defense Fund.
  • Sheila Olmstead, Professor of Public Affairs, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, Austin.
  • Robert Pindyck, Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Professor of Economics and Finance, MIT Sloan School of Management.
  • Gilbert Metcalf, Professor of Economics, Tufts University.
  • Navroz Dubash, Professor, Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
  • Paul Joskow, Elizabeth and James Killian Professor of Economics emeritus, MIT.
  • Maureen Cropper, Distinguished University Professor, University of Maryland.
  • Orley Ashenfelter, the Joseph Douglas Green 1895 Professor of Economics, Princeton University.
  • Jonathan Wiener, the William and Thomas Perkins Professor of Law, Duke Law School.
  • Lori Bennear, the Juli Plant Grainger Associate Professor of Energy Economics and Policy, Nicholas School of the Environment, Duke University.
  • Daniel Yergin, founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, and now Vice Chair of S&P Global.
  • Jeffrey Holmstead, who leads the Environmental Strategies Group at Bracewell in Washington, DC.
  • Daniel Jacob, Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry & Environmental Engineering at Harvard.
  • Michael Greenstone, Milton Friedman Distinguished Service Professor of Economics, University of Chicago.
  • Billy Pizer, Vice President for Research & Policy Engagement, Resources for the Future. 
  • Daniel Bodansky, Regents’ Professor, Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, Arizona State University.
  • Catherine Wolfram, Cora Jane Flood Professor of Business Administration, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, currently on leave at the Harvard Kennedy School.
  • James Stock, Harold Hitchings Burbank Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University.
  • Mary Nichols, long-time leader in California, U.S., and international climate change policy.
  • Geoffrey Heal, Donald Waite III Professor of Social Enterprise, Columbia Business School.
  • Kathleen Segerson, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Economics, University of Connecticut.
  • Meredith Fowlie, Professor of Agricultural and Resource Economics, U.C. Berkeley. 
  • Karen Palmer, Senior Fellow, Resources for the Future.
  • Severin Borenstein, Professor of the Graduate School, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley.
  • Michael Toffel, Senator John Heinz Professor of Environmental Management and Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School.
  • Emma Rothschild, Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History, Harvard University.
  • Nathaniel Keohane, President, C2ES.
  • Amy Harder, Executive Editor, Cypher News.
  • Richard Zeckhauser, Frank Ramsey Professor of Political Economy, Harvard Kennedy School.
  • Kimberly (Kim) Clausing, School of Law, University of California at Los Angeles
  • Hunt Allcott, Professor of Global Environmental Policy, Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.
  • Meghan O’Sullivan, Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of International Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.
  • Robert Lawrence, Albert Williams Professor of International Trade and Investment, Harvard Kennedy School.
  • Charles Taylor, Assistant Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School.
  • Wolfram Schlenker, Ray Goldberg Professor of the Global Food System, Harvard Kennedy School.
  • Karen Fisher-Vanden, Professor of Environmental & Resource Economics, Pennsylvania State University
  • Max Bearak, climate and energy reporter, New York Times
  • Vijay Vaitheeswaran, global energy and climate innovation editor, The Economist
  • Joseph Aldy, Teresa & John Heinz Professor of the Practice of Environmental Policy, Harvard Kennedy School
  • Nicholas Burns, Roy and Barbara Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy and International Relations, Harvard Kennedy School
  • Elaine Buckberg, Senior Fellow, Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, Harvard University
  • Anna Russo, Junior Fellow, Harvard University

“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

Share

Expanding the Electric Vehicle Market

In my series of podcasts, I’ve had the opportunity to engage in conversations with remarkable people who have worked at the intersection of economics, energy, and environment, with backgrounds and experiences in multiple sectors, including academia, government, the private sector, and NGOs.  My most recent podcast guest was no exception, because I was joined by Elaine Buckberg, my colleague at the Harvard Kennedy School, where she is a Senior Fellow in the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, and previously served as Chief Economist at General Motors, and before that worked at a number of economic consulting firms and investment banks, as well as the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the International Monetary Fund.

So, I was eager to feature an episode with Elaine in my monthly podcast,  “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.” The podcast is produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.  I hope you will listen to our conversation here.

Elaine Buckberg draws on her experience in macro, micro, and financial economics, both domestic and international, and much of her current work at Harvard focuses on the economics of electric vehicles (EVs) and policies intended to encourage their development and adoption.  

In our conversation, she remarks that despite progress in the growth of the U.S. EV market over the past decade, there remain a couple of significant obstacles.

“Number one is [the] availability of public charging. Everyone, even if they can install home charging, want to believe that if they buy an EV, they can do a road trip, and it won’t be a challenging or frustrating experience. So, having highway charging that works, that’s widespread, and that’s reliable is huge for adoption. And that comes through in JD Power surveys of vehicle buyers too, for the top five reasons why people just bought [or] don’t buy an EV in recent quarters are all about charging. The other barrier is about price differentials … People have a limited willingness to pay more for an EV,” she says.

Of course, the Trump administration is taking steps through its “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” Buckberg notes, to roll back subsidies for domestic EV purchases and impose a $250 per/year fee on EVs to compensate for lost gas taxes.  I will add that the OBBBA also functionally eliminates any effect of CAFE standards for motor vehicle fuel efficiency (which go back 50 years to a law signed by President Gerald Ford) by eliminating the penalty for non-compliance.

However, Elaine says that most automakers understand that changing market dynamics on their own will compel them to embrace green technologies. 

“[They] overwhelmingly believe that EVs are the future and are ambitious about getting into the market and want to be early winners in the EV market but also need to achieve profitability along the way in order to satisfy investors and be able to make those very substantial investments in their EV program,” she explains. “There [are] some differences among automakers. Automakers that are heavily in Europe or in China have to shift over their portfolios faster. I think GM and Ford are very ambitious. The Europeans are very ambitious. Hyundai and Kia [are] doing very well with EV models in the U.S. market.”

Looking over the longer term, Buckberg states that as EV battery ranges and charging capacities expand, this will further drive the advancement of the EV market – both in the U.S. and abroad.

“I’m a really big believer in the technological progress that the amount of research that’s happening on batteries – public and private – around the globe will really continue to drive down battery costs and get us to that point where buying an EV is actually cheaper than buying an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle even on the upfront costs, and that will be very compelling to people,” she states.

“I also think that some of the other challenges around charging and speed of charging are improving with continued rollout of chargers as well as improvements in the batteries that enable them to take in faster charges. You may have seen that there were a couple of breakthroughs from BYD and CATL, two Chinese companies, where they’re saying you could charge a vehicle in five minutes on new chargers they are developing that could provide more than a thousand kilowatts per hour and vehicles that could take them in at that speed.”

At the other end of the spectrum, Buckberg sounds an alarm for U.S. automakers who drag their feet on their EV programs.

“This is the future of auto, and if we want the U.S. to continue to compete in auto, if you want us to have jobs in auto and be a producer, we can’t fall further behind the rest of the world. Even without the emissions requirement, from a pure jobs and industry requirement, you want domestic production. This is the future of the auto industry, and if we don’t make them domestically, if we don’t promote sales, we will fall further behind in efficiency in learning, and we may not have a domestic auto industry in the future,” she warns.

For this and much more, please listen to my complete podcast conversation with Elaine Buckberg, the 68th episode over the past five years of the Environmental Insights series, with future episodes scheduled to drop each month.  You can find a transcript of our conversation at the website of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.  Previous episodes have featured conversations with:

“Environmental Insights” is hosted on SoundCloud, and is also available on iTunes, Pocket Casts, Spotify, and Stitcher.

Share