It is rarely possible to conduct controlled experiments in the social sciences owing to the vast number of variables that, in a “real-world” setting, can almost never be manipulated to create the ideal experimental conditions. However, there are occasionally instances when the unintended effects of certain policies create circumstances that are like an experiment, called a natural experiment. When the combination of a vehicle restriction policy in Beijing and the Chinese superstition about the...

A Financial Times article examining the sometimes-ambiguous environmental benefits of electric vehicles in China, whose energy market has yet to fully transition out of being fossil fuel-dominated, cites the findings of a China Project study... Read more about Financial Times Cites Recent China Project Study Exploring Environmental Implications of Electric Vehicle Charging in China

This spring the Harvard-China Project continued its investigations of the “China 2030/2050” theme sponsored by the Harvard Global Institute (HGI). Our community explored a number of pressing issues, including a Nature Energy paper on the environmental implications of electric vehicle charging in China. The research, which offers a strategy for reducing CO₂ emissions and improving air quality with electric vehicles in Beijing, was authored by a Harvard-Tsinghua...

By Jonathan Mingle

Imagine flipping a switch and lighting your home with hydropower from southern Brazil, solar power from the Sahara Desert, or wind power from the High Arctic. If Liu Zhenya’s plan comes to fruition, sourcing clean energy from the farthest reaches of the globe could become just that routine for billions of electricity users by 2050.... Read more about Commentary: Does the path to a low-carbon future run through a global grid?

The paper, "Wind-generated Electricity in China: Decreasing Potential, Inter-annual Variability and Association with Changing Climate," explores the effects of rising surface temperatures on wind speeds. It was co-authored by Peter Sherman, Xinyu Chen, and Michael B. McElroy, and named...

To combat climate change, reduce air pollution, and establish greater energy independence, China has been pushing hard for a nation-wide transition to renewable energy, and is now home to the world’s largest market for wind-generated electricity. The installed capacity for wind generation in China accounts for over one third of the global total. Yet a paper recently published in Nature Scientific Reports and covered by the Washington Post found that climate change might be threatening wind power — one of the very strategies that countries are relying on to help them achieve the goal set forth in the Paris Agreement of keeping global temperature rise below 2 degrees Celsius.... Read more about Commentary: Climate Change Might Be A Threat to Wind Power

This fall the Harvard-China Project continued its investigations of the “China 2030/2050” theme sponsored by the Harvard Global Institute (HGI). Our community continued its robust research into China's pressing environmental challenges, including the formation of haze pollution; the effects of carbon pricing policies; and the impact of climate change on renewable energy resources.... Read more about China Project Fall 2017 Newsletter

The Harvard-China Project on Energy, Economy and Environment is pleased to announce that the Project’s faculty, researchers, and staff have adopted an open-access policy. They unanimously endorsed the policy on September 21, 2017 to grant Harvard a nonexclusive and worldwide right to distribute “the fruits of [their] research and scholarship as widely as possible.”... Read more about China Project Adopts an Open-Access Policy

This summer was active and fruitful for the Harvard-China Project and its investigations of the “China 2030/2050” theme sponsored by the Harvard Global Institute (HGI). Summer provided time for intensive research progress in fields as diverse as haze pollution chemistry; grid integration of renewable power; household consumption, welfare and inequality; valuing environmental health risk over time; the impacts of interprovincial trade on air pollution; the carbon cycle in northern China; and the effects of changing land use and income on travel behavior in Chengdu.... Read more about China Project Summer 2017 Newsletter

On August 4, China’s lead official on climate change, Minister XIE Zhenhua, hosted a research and policy consultation with Profs. Mike McELROY, Steve WOFSY, executive director Chris NIELSEN, and Project alumni Dr. ZHANG Hongjun (Holland & Knight, LLP) and Prof. LU Xi (Tsinghua University) at his offices in Beijing. Discussion topics included the state of U.S.-China engagement on climate and the growing role of subnational governments, disparate regional capacities for carbon control within China... Read more about High-Level Meetings with Ministers Xie and Li

Funded by generous scholarships from the Harvard Global Institute, a diverse group of thirty Harvard College undergraduate students traveled to China in August 2017 on a trip organized by the Harvard-China Project, the Environmental Science and Public Policy concentration, and Tsinghua University to learn about and experience China’s environmental challenges first-hand. While in China, the Harvard students participated in a two-week intensive summer program, joined by eighty students from China and other countries around the world.... Read more about China’s Environmental Challenges: Summer Undergraduate Program in Beijing 2017

Beginning in Spring 2017, the China Project is publishing a newsletter at the end of every academic semester, recounting our recent activities and latest research developments, as well as previewing some of our upcoming activities. The newsletters are available in both English and Chinese and in various printed and electronic forms. Click on the links below to download the Spring 2017 edition.... Read more about China Project Spring 2017 Newsletter

Project Economist Mun HO and Executive Director Chris NIELSEN have an op-ed in Fortune (and in Chinese at Fortune China) on the underappreciated reasons China's red alert air pollution episodes are proving so difficult to control. Factors range from atmospheric chemistry and meteorology to economics and...

Project Chair Prof. Michael MCELROY and several other Harvard faculty weighed in on the implications that a Trump administration poses for climate change in a recent Harvard Gazette article. 

Prof. McElroy noted that even if the U.S. cedes leadership in climate impact and clean energy technology, “China most likely will continue to reduce its emissions regardless…because Chinese action is driven in part by rampant air pollution that the nation’s leadership has committed to address. The solutions there...