Duke Kunshan University will offer a new international master’s degree in environmental policy (IMEP) beginning in the fall of 2017. The four-semester, 16-course program is designed to meet the growing global need for leaders who are versed in both Chinese and international environmental issues and policies. Billy Pizer of the Sanford School and the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutionsis among the faculty members that spearheaded the program’s creation.

What was accomplished at the United Nation's Climate Change Conference in Paris? Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy Dean Kelly Brownell talks with Billy Pizer, Sanford professor and faculty fellow with the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, about the outcome. Pizer says the structure of the agreement is one that he's excited about, particularly because it considers how hard countries are trying to make change. "I'm optimistic that once we have the right incentives and the commitments in place, we'll actually do a lot more things that people couldn't even imagine," Pizer said.

Faculty fellow Billy Pizer was among the co-presenters of a proposal to Duke University’s Academic Council for the creation of an international master’s program in environmental policy at Duke Kunshan University. The Duke Chronicle reported that, according to the proposal, the program would begin in the 2017–2018 academic year and would focus on environmental research and law with the aim of fostering a sustained effort to address environmental issues in China.

China will commit to spending $3.1 billion to help developing countries slash their greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to climate change. Of course, there is much we still don't know about China's plans, including which projects the new multi-billion dollar pledge will end up financing, Billy Pizer, faculty fellow, Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University, told Mother Jones. "There's all these accounting questions. First: 'What counts?' Then: 'How do you add the numbers up?' It's hard to know exactly what $3.1 billion means until you know the details."

The United Nations’ Green Climate Fund is facing competition from the World Bank’s Climate Investment Fund, which was meant to act as an interim trustee while the U.N.’s fund got under way. The international community is left to decide which fund deserves money earmarked for efforts to combat climate change, a situation that some NGOs and civil society organizations find troubling. “Personally I think that competition is good,” faculty fellow Billy Pizer told Le Monde Diplomatique. “I think it makes people operate more efficiently and be more responsive.”

Addressing the threat caused by global climate change will require many difficult choices, some of which may negatively impact industry. The concept of carbon pricing has been proposed as one method of reducing carbon emissions by creating economic incentives for doing so. Yet critics have long claimed that this scheme will burden domestic manufacturers with higher costs, reduced production and increased competition from imports. A new article forthcoming in the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists and co-authored by the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions' Billy Pizer, examines this tension in depth, and provides a potential policy path forward.

Even before the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced its plan, in June 2014, to regulate emissions from existing power plants, the door appeared to open for a similar effort in other sectors, including petroleum refining. Three Duke University students led by staff from Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and Clean Energy Durham set out to investigate whether policies for regulating carbon emissions from electric-generating units (EGUs) might be translatable to a greenhouse gas (GHG) performance standard for refineries.

When the Obama administration releases the final Clean Power Plan regulating greenhouse gas emissions at electric power plants today, it will mark the enactment of the nation's most ambitious climate program in history. It's supposed to cut the sector's greenhouse gas emissions by 32 percent. Billy Pizer, faculty fellow at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, comments in ClimateWire.

Faculty fellow Billy Pizer told John Munson, guest host of Wisconsin NPR’s Joy Cardin Show, that a climate deal in which national emissions reduction commitments are based on cuts from 1990 levels may not be that helpful. More fruitful is how much countries are doing now to reduce their emissions. The best outcome, he said, is a deal that everyone feels good about and that produces a mechanism that makes action on commitments transparent.

In an article co-authored for Resources Magazine, the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions' Billy Pizer notes that understanding the comparability of countries' pledges to reduce greenhouse gases is critical to the negotiating process at the United Nations climate change conference in Paris in December 2015. Neither specific metrics nor a comprehensive policy surveillance mechanism have been agreed. To inform that difficult task, Pizer and co-author Joseph E. Aldy present three basic design principles and illustrate how an array of metrics might satisfy them. Because no single metrics satisfies all the principles, they recommend a portfolio approach that assesses countries' estimated emissions levels, emissions abatement, carbon and energy price effects, and implementation costs.