Update from the Harvard Methane Initiative

In previous essays at my blog, I have described the university-wide initiative we launched at Harvard in 2023, “Reducing Global Methane Emissions,” a research and outreach cluster of the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability.  In today’s blog post, I’m providing an update on some of our activities over the first year of this three-year initiative.  If you’ve already received this update from a separate distribution list, I apologize for the duplication!

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Celebrating Year One of the Harvard Initiative on Reducing Global Methane Emissions 

Overview

The Harvard Initiative on Reducing Global Methane Emissions, supported by the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University, is celebrating its first anniversary. The Initiative, which was launched in July 2023, seeks meaningful and sustained progress in global methane-emissions reductions through research and effective engagement with policymakers, as well as with key stakeholders in business, nongovernmental organizations, and international institutions. Methane-emissions abatement can, in the near term, significantly reduce the magnitude of climate change and its impacts, giving the world time to “bend the curve” on CO2 emissions, conduct research on carbon removal, and, more generally, to implement longer-term strategies to mitigate and adapt to climate change.

The Harvard Methane Initiative is one of five ambitious, multidisciplinary, three-year, University-wide climate-research clusters supported by the Salata Institute (with additional clusters to be added soon). As the Initiative celebrates its first anniversary, this update looks back at its interim achievements.

A more detailed description of the Initiative can be found here. 

Research

Research lies at the core of the Harvard Methane Initiative, primarily in the form of projects conducted by multidisciplinary teams of Harvard faculty members and other Harvard researchers that is improving our understanding of strategies to mitigate methane emissions. With seven research projects launched in the Initiative’s first year, and 11 research projects added in the Initiative’s second year, we list below some research briefs published by the Initiative, as well as press mentions.

Research Briefs:

Updating Estimates of Methane Emissions: Rising Emissions in Africa from Rice Agriculture (April 2024)

EPA’s Municipal Solid Waste Landfill Methane Emission Rules (February 2024)

Methane and Trade: Paving the Way for Enhanced Global Cooperation on Climate Change (July 2023)

Updating Estimates of Methane Emissions: The Case of China (May 2023)

Research News:

Methane Sensors are Finding Dangerous Pollutants in Low-income Neighborhoods (March 2024)Methane

Initiative Collaborator Releases Legal Analysis of IRA’s Methane Fee (February 2024)

How Regulators Use Satellite Images of Methane (October 2023)

Using History to Target Methane Super-Emitters (October 2023) 


Outreach: Events, Podcasts, and Resources

The Harvard Methane Initiative places great importance on communicating the results of its research to key stakeholders. Following are reports on such outreach activities, conducted by the Initiative and collaborating Harvard faculty members. 

HEEP Director Robert Stavins Moderates Harvard Climate Action Week Panel on “Strategies for Mitigating Global Methane Emissions” (June 2024); article and video recording. Efforts to measure and mitigate the impact of methane emissions were the topic of discussion at a panel convened as part of Harvard Climate Action Week, sponsored by Harvard’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability and moderated by Harvard Methane Initiative Director Robert Stavins. The panel consisted of these leading experts: Mark Brownstein, Environmental Defense Fund; Jody Freeman, Environmental and Energy Law Program, Harvard Law School; Adam Pacsi, Methane Policy Advisor, Chevron; and Stephen Wofsy, Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Science. 

Reducing Methane Emissions in the Oil and Natural Gas Sector (February 2024). This animated video, narrated by Jody Freeman, Environmental and Energy Law Program, Harvard Law School, explains the U.S. methane-regulatory process. Regulation of methane emissions, especially in the oil and gas sector, is one of the Program’s principal research areas. See the Program’s methane home page here and several other items associated with the Program in this email update. 

Analyzing COP 28: A Conversation with Jonathan Banks” (December 2023). “Environmental Insights” podcast hosted by Robert Stavins, Director of the Harvard Methane Initiative. Jonathan Banks is Global Director, Methane Pollution Prevention with the Clean Air Task Force (CATF), where he develops and directs all of CATF’s international efforts to reduce methane pollution from energy, waste, and agriculture. 

Global and U.S. Methane Emissions Reduction Progress. Jody Freeman, Director of the Environment and Energy Law Program, Harvard Law School, hosted a podcast in December 2023 as part of the Program’s “Clean Law” series, providing an insightful and wide-ranging overview of global and U.S. developments in reducing methane emissions. 

Harvard Side Event at COP28 on Reducing Global Methane Emissions (November 2023). This video recording of the Initiative’s panel event at the annual UN climate-change conference features James Stock, Professor of Economics and Director, Harvard Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability; Claire Henly, advisor, non-CO2 gases, US Presidential Envoy for Climate; Helena Varkkey, Project Lead, Initiative on Methane Emissions in Malaysia; Daniel Jacob, Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry, Harvard University; Robert Stavins, Director, Harvard Methane Initiative. 

Harvard Speaks on Climate Change: Satellite Detection of Methane Emissions (December 2023). This video recording features Harvard faculty members Daniel Jacob, Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry; Stephen Wofsy, Professor of Atmospheric and Environmental Science; and James Stock, Professor of Economics and Director, Salata Institute. 

Emma Rothschild on Adam Smith, Methane Emissions, and Climate Change” (November 2023). “Environmental Insights” podcast hosted by Robert Stavins, Director of the Harvard Methane Initiative. See also blog post by Stavins summarizing the conversation. Emma Rothschild is the Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History at Harvard University and the co-lead on a project supported by the Harvard Methane Initiative exploring the use of satellite data to inform short histories of global super-emitter sites. 

Launching a Harvard Initiative to Reduce Global Methane Emissions” (July 2023). Blog post by Robert Stavins, faculty Director of the Harvard Methane Initiative. Blog titled “An Economic View of the Environment.” 

Harvard Hosts International Workshop on Remote Sensing of Methane (June 2023). At a workshop hosted by Harvard in September 2023, leaders of the global effort to track methane emissions with satellite technology discussed how to coordinate their technical approaches and other opportunities for collaboration. The workshop was organized by the United Nations Environment Programme’s International Methane Emissions Observatory, with the support of the Global Methane Hub

The Challenge of Aligning Interests in Pennsylvania Methane Cleanup (September 2023). A climate research workshop hosted by the Salata Institute explored solutions to the problem of abandoned oil and gas wells in Pennsylvania and beyond. 

Methane and Climate Change Policy: A Conversation with Daniel Jacob” (September 2022). “Environmental Insights” podcast hosted by Robert Stavins, Director of the Harvard Methane Initiative. See also blog post by Stavins summarizing the conversation. Daniel Jacob is the Vasco McCoy Family Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Environmental Engineering at Harvard University and one the world’s leading experts on satellite-based detection and attribution of methane emissions. He is an active participant in the Harvard Methane Initiative. 

Harvard Environmental Economics Program
Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government
Harvard Kennedy School79 John F. Kennedy Street Cambridge, MA 02138 USA
© 2023 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
https://salatainstitute.harvard.edu/projects/methanesalata_methaneinitiative@harvard.edu 

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Adam Smith, Methane Emissions, and Climate Change

Most of my guests in my podcast series, “Environmental Insights: Discussions on Policy and Practice from the Harvard Environmental Economics Program,” have been academic economists, but I’ve also had the privilege of talking with some leading lights from other disciplines, including ones that seem adjacent to economics, such as political science and law, and also some that are further afield, such as physics and chemistry.  Most recently, I had the opportunity to delve into a realm that bridges the humanities (in particular, history) and social science (in particular, economics), by talking with a star in the field of economic history, Emma Rothschild, the Jeremy and Jane Knowles Professor of History at Harvard, and Fellow at Magdalene College and Honorary Professor of History and Economics at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom.  The podcast is produced by the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.  You can listen to our complete conversation here.

Professor Rothschild, who serves as director of the Harvard Joint Center for History and Economics and a faculty contributor to the Visualizing Climate and Loss project, has devoted much of her academic career to research and teaching at the intersection of history, economics, and the environment, where she sees growing opportunities to affect thinking about climate change.

“One of the things that makes me very optimistic now about my field is that so many people interested in economic history are now seeing that the environment and climate [are] part of economic history and vice versa,” she states. “I’ve been … struck by how many of the top [academic job] candidates this year actually have either environmental papers, climate papers, or history papers as part of their portfolios, and in many cases, both actually. I just think the PhD students are kind of understanding this much faster than perhaps the educational establishment.”

Rothschild has focused a considerable part of her scholarly work on the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith, credited for helping originate the study of free market economies. Specifically, Rothschild says she became intrigued by why some people blame Smith for today’s global climate change problem.  

“I became interested in the question, ‘Well, did he say anything that could conceivably have led people to think this? And what did he, to the extent that we can discern this, think about the origins of the industrial revolution in relation to a more plausible, causal story about how industrial growth of the late 18th century actually did lead to contemporary climate change?,’” she says.  Rothschild has written a series of papers about Smith to gain a deeper understanding of “the ways in which Smith’s ideas can be of interest in thinking about the discordant times in which we now live.”

Emma is also deeply involved in the Methane In 1,800 Histories project, designed to promote discussion and research on the 1,800 local sites of severe methane emissions around the world.

“This project came about really opportunistically when I saw a very good article that was the cover piece in Science a little over a year ago by some French climate scientists who were actually able to map almost 1,800 sites of ultra methane emissions worldwide. A lot of this has been done for the U.S. and for other countries. They were able, using satellite data, to give a literally worldwide overview of where the largest methane emitters were,” she states.

“And this turned into a collaborative project,” she continues. “We’d done a big visualization of all the sites. And the aspiration is that young historians [and] young economists will actually investigate each of these sites and thereby contribute to an understanding of the history of why climate change is happening. And, of course, thereby in turn, start to think in a practical and local way about what can be done about the sites.”

Related to this is her research project with Steve Wofsy, Professor of Atmospheric and Environmental Science at Harvard, “Using Remote Sensing Data to Inform Micro-Histories of Methane-Release Sites,” which is part of the Harvard-wide Initiative on Reducing Global Methane Emissions, sponsored by the Salata Institute on Climate and Sustainability at Harvard.

Rothschild goes on to argue that local solutions to climate change may seem more plausible to people who are daunted by the enormity of the challenge.

“Part of what’s so difficult about climate change is that the instruments, mainly global policy change, seem so beyond the capacity of individuals or groups to affect,” she remarks “Climate change is really immediate to people in their early 20s or late teens thinking about their own lives and thinking about, ‘What can I do with all the knowledge I’m acquiring, all the skills that I have, to do something?’”

For this and much, much more, I encourage you to listen to this 53rd episode 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.

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