Joseph Aldy Studies and Devises Climate Change Policy and Energy Policy

Profile of a scholar and adviser to presidents on energy policy and climate change policy

Joseph Aldy

When Joseph Aldy trekked up Mount Kilimanjaro with his father in 2000, he was a long way from the farm in Kentucky where he grew up—but close to the things that matter to him. Aldy is an economist who works on energy and climate-change policy. He loves to hike. On Kilimanjaro’s 19,341-foot peak, he got to see the last vestiges of the 11,000-year-old glaciers there—they are expected to disappear within the next decade or so. An assistant professor of public policy at Harvard Kennedy School (HKS), he is faculty chair of the regulatory-policy program at its Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government. He got his start in environmental economics in Washington, D.C., where he became jet-lagged working on the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, even though he didn’t go to Japan: he was the economist who stayed home and crunched U.S. emissions numbers from 7:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. for the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). In the Clinton administration, he rose from a presidential management internship to posts as staff economist, and then senior economist for the environment and natural resources, for the CEA. After earning a Ph.D. from Harvard in 2005, he returned to government service under President Obama as special assistant to the president for energy and environment, deferring his appointment at HKS to work on the clean-energy package of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, among other initiatives. “The political world can get hung up on trivial things,” he says, but experience gained by “working in Washington can help you understand what really is a relevant policy question. Scholarship needs to be informative.”

You might also like

At Harvard, Mike Pence Discusses Democracy and Conservatism

The former vice president denounces political violence, expresses hope for a deal between Trump and the University.

Is the Constitution Broken?

Harvard legal scholars debate the state of our founding national document.

Harvard Panel Debunks the Population Implosion Myth

Public health professors parse the evidence surrounding falling U.S. birth rates.

Most popular

What Trump Means for John Roberts’s Legacy

Executive power is on the docket at the Supreme Court.

“AI Anxiety”

The Undergraduate on the uneasy collision of technology and writing

How Maga Went Mainstream at Harvard

Trump, TikTok, and the pandemic are reshaping Gen Z politics.

Explore More From Current Issue

Man, standing in small group of people outside the courthouse, holding a sign that reads "HANDS OFF HARVARD" in red letters

Harvard’s Summer In Court

What Columbia’s settlement means for the University

Book cover of "Black Moses" by Caleb Gayle with subtitle about ambition and the fight for a Black state.

Civil Rights In the American West

A new book chronicles one man’s quest for a Black state.

John Goldberg

Harvard In the News

University layoffs, professors in court, and a new Law School dean