Kleinman Center Participates in Council of State Governments Meeting

QUÉBEC CITY—Dr. Mark Alan Hughes, faculty director of University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, will address elected officials on the topic of climate change and the energy system at the Council of State Governments (CSG) Eastern Regional Conference (ERC) in Québec City.

The CSG / ERC annual meeting provides a platform for exchanging ideas and information among state and provincial leaders from 18 Northeastern states and Canadian provinces.  

Today’s morning plenary, moderated by Massachusetts State Senator Marc Pacheco, is entitled “Climate Change: The Changing Arctic Ecosystem, the Paris Agreement, and Subnational Policies.” Hughes shares the stage with Honorable Bruce Heyman, U.S. Ambassador to Canada; David Heurtel, Québec’s Minister of Sustainable Development, Environment and the Fight Against Climate Change; Jean Lemire, documentary filmmaker and biologist; and Dr. Louis Fortier, professor at Laval University and arctic oceanographer.

In his presentation, Hughes will discuss the crucial role cities play in addressing climate change while meeting the challenges of equitable human development. 

“Cities have a ‘charge-of-the-light brigade’ impulse on progressive goals. And over half of the measures needed to implement the Paris climate goals rely on cities and states. So the world is making a big bet on cities to implement those measures,” says Hughes. “But perhaps the biggest unexamined assumption of Paris is whether cities, regions, and states have the capacity to mobilize the financial, political, and technical resources needed to implement the measures and achieve the goals. Global targets are a weak organizing device for such mobilization of local resources. Cities must understand local benefits and costs from various rates of decarbonization on economic, environmental, health, and other conditions at the regional scale.”

Dr. Mark Alan Hughes is a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design and founding faculty director of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy. He is also the founding faculty director of the Fels Policy Research Initiative at Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences. 

For media inquiries, please contact:
Lindsey Samahon
Kleinman Center for Energy Policy
University of Pennsylvania
(484) 362-8316
kleinmanenergy@upenn.edu