The North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality recently released the North Carolina Clean Energy Plan to significantly reduce greenhouse gases from electricity production over the next decade. The goal is to get to zero emissions by 2050, starting with a 60 to 70 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2030.

The latest episode of Ways & Means, a podcast presented by the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, looks at who will take the hardest hit financially from climate change and whether anything can be done about it. The episode features an interview with Billy Pizer, an environmental economist with joint appointments as a professor at the Sanford School and as a faculty fellow at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.

Governor Roy Cooper recently signed an executive order on climate change, setting goals for the state's economy to reduce greenhouse emissions 40 percent from earlier levels by 2025.

“These goals by themselves do not really have much effect,” wrote Billy Pizer, faculty fellow in the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and Susan B. King Professor of Public Policy, in an article appearing in the Duke Chronicle. "Any real action will require legislation."

A proposal by Washington state to tax carbon have it join California as the only states with a firm plan to tackle emissions reductions beyond the power sector. But the proposal, Billy Pizer, a faculty fellow at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, is a risky move.

Can China’s international development efforts be environmentally sustainable and will its unique approach to emissions trading work?

The Trump administration unveiled a draft plan today that would replace the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era rule to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Nicholas Institute experts are available to comment.

PolitiFact unpacks a tweet by President Donald Trump that indicated “101 utilities cut rates, credit GOP tax cuts.”

Part of the Together Duke academic strategic plan, these new grant opportunities provide flexible, immediate resources to strengthen Duke’s intellectual communities and help research groups move forward on both fundamental inquiry and solutions for real-world problems.

Billy Pizer, a professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke and a faculty fellow at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, tells Yahoo Finance that companies increasingly appeal to consumers' environmentally friendly nature.

Judith Kelley, an expert on human rights, democracy and international elections, has been named dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, President Vincent E. Price and Provost Sally Kornbluth announced Thursday.