Writing
My columns, essays, books, as well as research and teaching materials like case studies.
The Ukraine War Blew Up the World’s Energy Economy
And the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act is surprisingly well-designed to deal with the fallout.
Supply, demand and polarization challenges facing US climate policies
by Matthew G. Burgess, Leaf Van Boven, Gernot Wagner, Gabrielle Wong-Parodi et al
How to Assess the Outcome of COP28
Given that this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference was hosted by a petrostate and led by a fossil-fuel CEO, climate campaigners understandably had low expectations. Yet the summit did deliver some new commitments, and there is good reason to think that they are more than just empty words.
What Steel Decarbonization Needs
It is both technically possible and economically feasible to eliminate almost all the carbon dioxide from iron and steel production by mid-century, thus cleaning up an industry that accounts for 10% of global emissions. But progress will not happen without a concerted policy push.
How China Can Save the World – and Itself
by Gernot Wagner & Conor Walsh
Taming Carbon
When the Price Is Right
The Green Growth Mindset
Heated academic debates between proponents and opponents of traditional economic growth under capitalism might make for good television, but they offer little in the way of solutions. Climate change demands that we achieve both growth and degrowth, depending on the activity and economic sector in question.
Carbon Capture and Delay
As long as coal plants are still operating, it is a good idea to require them capture their carbon dioxide emissions. But those designing policies to hasten such practices must tread carefully, lest they unwittingly extend the life of dirtier energy sources.
What the Climate Fight Is Really About
Hint: It's about minimizing risks and uncertainties.
There’s Only One Way to Fix New York’s Traffic Gridlock
by Charles Komanoff and Gernot Wagner
How to Think About Climate-Tech Solutions
To think that technology will save us from climate change is to invite riskier behavior, or moral hazard. Whether a climate technology creates new problems has little to do with the solution, and everything to do with us.
Will the Banking Busts Hurt Clean Tech?
Rather than impeding the clean-energy race, the recent collapse of the US start-up community's go-to bank offers valuable lessons for managing the public-private minuet that the net-zero transition requires. The doomsayers are missing the bigger picture.
Europe Must Tax Brown and Subsidize Green
The US Inflation Reduction Act is a landmark legislative package that should be welcomed around the world, despite its putatively protectionist features. Owing to the positive learning-by-doing spillovers that follow from green subsidies, Europe and the rest of the world ultimately will benefit, too.
3 ways to spend Biden’s clean-energy windfall faster
Build, build, build.
Can geoengineering slow climate change? We need research to find out.
Geoengineering research flights are a good federal investment
Our City Could Become One of the World’s Greenest, but It Won’t Be Easy
by Paul Greenberg and Gernot Wagner
Realism About Techno-Optimism
Speeding up the adoption of already proven and scalable technologies, and exposing the many hidden costs associated with fossil fuels, is a necessary goal. Achieving it will require new policies to guide investments in the right direction, and techno-optimists ought to be the loudest advocates.