Last week, President Barack Obama announced his plan for a $1 billion Climate Resilience Fund—a departure from recent budget cuts in the environmental sector. The fund, some experts say, may trickle down to more specific areas of the country, such as the University itself. Billy Pizer, faculty fellow at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, comments in this Chronicle article.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Friday, Feb. 14, 2014

Media Contact: Karen Kemp
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President Obama's plans announced Friday include a $1 billion “Climate Resilience Fund” in his budget proposal.

Duke Today showcases the challenges and rewards of politically engaged research Sanford School of Public Policy Professors face. Story includes comments by Nicholas Institute Faculty Fellow Billy Pizer.

The scaling back of subsidies designed to spur investment in Europe, the low price of natural gas in the United States, and a reduction in wind power spending in China have helped offset new investments elsewhere, according to the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI) report, released Tuesday. Billy Pizer, faculty fellow at the Nicholas Institute, comments in this Christian Science Monitor article.

Even as hopes for a binding international agreement to substantially reduce global greenhouse gas emissions have faded in recent years, a bottom-up international climate policy regime is emerging.

A meeting of the Green Climate Fund closed in Paris yesterday with no definite date for raising money from rich countries but did emerge with some guidelines on how that still-empty pot of funding could someday be allocated, activists said. Billy Pizer, Nicholas Institute faculty fellow, comments in this ClimateWire article ($).

Chinas has become a global leader in building synthetic natural gas plants, but according to a recent Duke study this investment comes with serious environmental costs. Billy Pizer, faculty fellow at the Nicholas Institute, comments in this Duke Chronicle article.

Ecuador's Yasuni National Park is one of the most diverse ecosystems on Earth. But there's a complication: The park sits on top of the equivalent of millions of barrels of oil. Nicholas Institute Faculty Fellow Billy Pizer discusses the dilema in this NPR episode.

Billy Pizer, faculty fellow at the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and associate professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy, discusses how governments can create incentives that maximize the achievement of emissions reductions for a given amount of public funds in Carbon Ma

The Center on Global Development’s Scott Morris and the Nicholas Institute's Billy Pizer think through when the World Bank should and shouldn’t fund coal. The bottom line: “The bank should be ambitious in working toward clean energy approaches in its development strategies, but it would be a mistake to definitively rule out coal in all circumstances.”