In The Hill, the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions Billy Pizer and others write about the case for the Green Climate Fund, noting that the fund will help developing countries build resilience to climate-related disasters and reduce the carbon pollution that drives climate change. 

Billy Pizer, a faculty fellow at Duke’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy, was among the Duke representatives at the Navigating the American Carbon World Conference in Los Angeles, California, this week. Pizer, who led a panel on the Opportunities and Challenges for Carbon Markets under the Clean Power Plan, reflects on three issues brought up at the conference.

States implementing U.S. EPA's Clean Power Plan run the risk of writing plans that limit short-term costs and impacts on the coal industry but make carbon reductions more difficult down the line, according to a new Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions study featured in ClimateWire.The draft rule sets different carbon dioxide emission rates for each state's power sector and tasks state officials with deciding how to reach those levels. The Nicholas Institute compared the effects of setting a price on carbon versus implementing different kinds of rate-based standards for electric generators. 

Faculty fellow Billy Pizer disputes Sen. Marco Rubio’s claim that cap and trade “would have a devastating impact on our economy." Pizer told PolitiFact that, depending on the policy specifics, different cap-and-trade programs would have different effects on the economy and climate change but ideally would seek to balance costs and benefits. “Europe, California, New England—they all have cap and trade and nothing has been devastated,” Pizer said. “There is nothing about a generic cap and trade that is devastating.”

The leader of a new libertarian think tank is challenging conservatives to support a carbon tax in exchange for a bucket of Republican victories, including a repeal of regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. This article in ClimateWire includes comments from Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions Faculty Fellow Billy Pizer.

Faculty fellow Billy Pizer said University of Illinois economist Don Fullerton, Nannerl Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professor at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill, has influenced policy makers’ understanding of man-made climate change. Pizer introduced Fullerton's Duke University Sanford School talk on the pros and cons of a carbon tax.

Is the social cost of carbon six times higher than the U.S. government figure, as a Stanford study contends? Faculty fellow William Pizer says the Stanford figure is most likely an overestimate.

In responding to a Stanford study suggesting that the social cost of carbon should be much higher that the estimate currently used by the U.S. government, faculty fellow William Pizer said, “To me, it [the Stanford figure of $220 per ton of CO2] just seems like it has to be an overestimate.”

Faculty fellow William Pizer questioned the methodology of a Stanford analysis that put the social cost of carbon at $220 per ton. He pointed out that the analysis relied on the impact on national economies of short-term temperature spikes rather than on long-term trends that might reveal permanent economic reductions. “I just think this is another data point that someone needs to weigh as they're trying to figure out what the right social cost of carbon is. But this isn't like a definitive new answer.”

Climate change has no single, easy fix, Nicholas Institute faculty fellow Billy Pizer told Duke Today. “To solve climate change, we have to fundamentally change the way we use energy,” Pizer said. “That won’t happen without incentives to develop new, cleaner forms of energy. It’s much more complicated than just filtering water and getting smoke out of smokestacks.”