Building a Clean Energy Economy with Strong, Stable, Shared Growth

Catalog description

Why is it so hard to stop emitting the greenhouse gases that cause climate change and threaten to upend the planet’s environment? An answer is that since the production and use of energy forms the backbone of the modern economy, we fear that changing our current energy systems will have negative economic outcomes. Fossil fuel energy systems enabled the Industrial Revolution and have led to vastly improved living standards. Doing all the things we need to do to address emissions – building up new systems for generating power and transportation, new production methods for heavy industry and agriculture, and new ways of building design and land use – will require shifting to relatively novel technologies, creating uncertainties about the implications for energy prices, as well as bigger questions around the path forward for economic growth, global competitiveness, and the availability of good jobs. This course will examine energy policy from the perspective of an economic policymaker, asking what do we know about how to foster a clean energy system with low or no greenhouse gas emissions while also delivering strong, stable, shared economic growth? This course will begin by laying out the role that energy systems have played in powering economic development; we will then move on to assess what parts of the economy might be at risk when shifting away from current energy systems to new, clean energy technologies; and the last third of the course will identify the implications for economic policymaking.