Talk of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is spilling out of scientific circles and into the realm of climate politics and policy. Civil society has a vital role to play in ensuring that this conversation is responsive to social needs and develops in constructive and appropriate ways....

Recent assessments of progress on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions suggest thatefforts to reduce emissions are well below what is necessary to meet current global targetsof 2°C, let alone 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Current Intergovernmental Panel onClimate Change models...

We develop a spatial model of energy exploitation where energy sources are differentiated by their geographic location and energy density. The spatial setting creates a scaling law that magnifies the importance of differences across energy sources. As a result, renewable sources twice as dense,...

This paper sets out a simple spatial model of energy exploitation to ask how the location and productivity of energy resources affects the distribution of economic activity across geographic space. By combining elements from energy economics and economic geography we link the productivity of...

The rebound effect is a well-known behavioral response whereby potential energy savings from efficiency improvements are partially offset by increased consumption of energy services, as the marginal cost of energy services is reduced. This paper characterizes a similar rebound effect related to...

Engineering the climate via Solar Radiation Management (SRM) is increasingly considered as a component of future climate policies. We study the strategic incentives for countries to choose the level of SRM at different times in the future, accounting for the regionally uneven effect of SRM on...

Columbus’s arrival in the New World triggered an unprecedented movement of people and crops across the Atlantic Ocean. We study an overlooked part of this Columbian Exchange: the effects of New World crops in Africa. Specifically, we test the hypothesis that the introduction of maize increased...

This paper introduces geoengineering into an optimal control model of climate change economics. Together with mitigation and adaptation, carbon and solar geoengineering span the universe of possible climate policies. Their wildly different characteristics have important implications for climate...

Solar geoengineering has received increasing attention as an option to temporarily stabilize global temperatures. A key concern surrounding these technologies is that heterogeneous preferences over the optimal amount of cooling combined with low deployment costs may allow the country with the...

Pilot and demonstration (P&D) projects are commonly deployed to catalyze early adoption of technology, but are poorly understood in terms of mechanism and impact. We conceptually distinguish unique functions of pilots and demonstrations, then examine whether they accelerate green building...