Climate and Energy Program

To learn more about our current projects,
read our 2009 Center Report.

The transition to modern energy forms was the engine for the industrial revolution. The threat of global climate disruption and the lack of basic energy services for billions of people now call for a new energy transition. Clean and affordable energy technologies must be brought to the market, and energy policies and institutions must foster equitable development. The Climate and Energy Program at SEI-US addresses this challenge through research, policy assessment and capacity building. For over two decades, we have worked in the U.S. and around the world to spur innovative energy strategies that support the goals of social equity, environment quality, and efficient economic development.

We work in in the following areas:

• Climate Policy: Our projects on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions include GHG inventories, scenarios of future emission profiles, and mitigation strategies. We analyze policy mechanisms to address climate change concerns. These include the various forms of joint project development and emission trading that are under discussion in the climate negotiations, GHG externality valuation, and carbon tax studies. We work to build capacity by conducting training workshops on such issues as greenhouse gas mitigation, integrated energy planning, environmental analysis, and modeling.
• Methods and Tools: Many of our energy and environment projects involve training, software development and dissemination. We have designed and developed software, courses, and handbooks on greenhouse gas mitigation, integrated energy planning, environmental impact analysis, and other energy-environment topics. Our LEAP system is used by many hundreds of organizations in dozens of countries for integrated energy and environmental planning.
• Sustainable Energy Strategies: We develop integrated strategies for energy development. We have conducted scores of international projects that analyze existing national and regional energy systems, consider alternative energy development scenarios, and identify appropriate policies. A recent focus is on modern biomass energy strategies that improve access of the poor to affordable and efficient energy services while stimulating local economies.

We focus on the following Areas of Research:

• Climate Economics Environmental advocates are often much better prepared to address the science than the economics of the issues they are working on. As the grounds of the debate are shifting, there is a need for development of a progressive economic analysis of climate change. SEI's research on climate economics seeks to reframe the debate and counter the argument that doing anything about climate change is prohibitively expensive.
• Vulnerability and Adaptation: SEI's work on adaptation lies at the intersection of sustainable development and climate change. Support includes vulnerability assessments, financial needs assessments, capacity-building and response strategies, and widespread integration of climate risks and adaptation actions into local, national, and regional policies and planning. SEI has worked with international and national agencies to develop climate change adaptation policies, training programs and software tools for climate change adaptation for countires in Asia, Latin America and Africa.
• Greenhouse Development Rights (GDR): The emerging climate crisis must be seen against the backdrop of an ongoing development crisis, and it is unacceptable and unrealistic to expect those struggling against poverty to focus their limited resources on averting climate change. Therefore those who are wealthier and have produced higher levels of emissions must take on the bulk of the costs of a global “emergency program” of mitigation and adaptation. Developing countries should still curb their emissions, but the global consuming class – the industrialized world and elites within developing countries – must cover the costs and provide the resources, the report states. The GDR provides a simple and elegant solution to address the current stalemate between Annex 1 and non-Annex 1 coutnry. It offeres a fair, equitable, and politically promising solution to the climate crisis.
• US States and Local Climate Action: SEI-US provides analytical support and facilitation to numerous State and Local stakeholder processes ( Arizona, New Mexico, North Carolina, Minnesota, Montana, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, the Puget Sound area, South Carolina, Maryland, Michigan, and Virginia) that are developing comprehensive and innovative strategies to reverse GHG emissions growth in the U.S. The processes are typically launched by the Governors of the states.
• Carbon Trading & Offsets: SEI is providing guidance for the potential development of a U.S. carbon offset program as part of a future mandatory GHG compliance regime. SEI has done extensive research on mandatory and voluntary carbon offset programs and cap-and-trade systems.
• COMMEND & LEAP: COMMEND (COMMunity for ENergy environment & Development) is an international initiative designed to foster a community among energy analysts working on energy for sustainable development.  COMMEND is built upon a previous effort led by SEI to create a set of transparent and user-friendly software tools for strategic analysis of energy and environmental policy issues. That project has resulted in the creation of an advanced Windows-based software tool named LEAP, the Long-range Energy Alternatives Planning system, which has already been widely disseminated and applied in hundreds of organizations in the developing world.