Policy Practicum: Bridging the Climate Data and Decisionmaking Divide

Catalog description

Many companies, investors, advocates, researchers, and policymakers are frustrated by the lack of authoritative and accessible information that can confirm greenhouse gas emissions reductions and removals. Decisionmakers cannot effectively combat climate change without shared, high-quality information on baseline and changing greenhouse gas conditions where emissions and/or removals are taking place. Authoritative agreements, protocols and standards are needed to address these deficiencies and build an integrated system of "bottom up" and "top down" GHG data for the benefit of all climate data users. Progress on these matters will enable verification of carbon reports and claims -- a critical element for clarifying and improving corporate GHG reporting, establishing high integrity carbon markets, encouraging innovation, increasing competition, and helping investors identify new opportunities. It is a particularly propitious time to take on this work, given the large investments that many companies, non-profits, and governmental entities are making in obtaining new and better data on GHG emission reductions and removals for carbon dioxide removals, methane sources, and other GHG use cases. Students in this policy lab will work with the non-profit Data Foundation to highlight areas encumbered by serious climate data deficiencies and to develop an action plan to address them. By looking across other policy areas in which similar data challenges have arisen, students will explore the frontiers of how key climate mitigation data can be more effectively developed, shared, and analyzed in open source formats while respecting privacy, proprietary, and other data source concerns. Various institutional and governance arrangements also will be explored and evaluated through the course of the policy lab. Student work will contribute to a major conference that the Data Foundation…