Electra Steel is Sandeep Nijhawan’s brainchild to decarbonize the process of making steel by creating green iron ore. The incumbent steel industry is a big offender when it comes to greenhouse gases, emitting about 2 tonnes of CO2 produced for every tonne of steel, and a major part of emissions-producing steel production hinges on the processing of iron, so Electra’s strategy is to address this part. This case discusses the steel manufacturing industry and the process of converting iron to steel as well as highlights sources of emissions.
Gernot Wagner
- Senior Lecturer in Discipline of Economics in the Faculty of Business
- Economics Division
- Faculty Director, Climate Knowledge Initiative
- Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change
- Faculty Fellow
- CESifo
- Board Member
- CarbonPlan
- Columnist
- Project Syndicate
- Senior Fellow
- Jain Family Institute
- Areas of Expertise
- Climate
- Contact
- Office: 392 Kravis
- Phone: (212) 8534096
- E-mail: [email protected]
* It's pronounced like "juggernaut" without the "jug."
Gernot Wagner is a climate economist at Columbia Business School. His research, writing, and teaching focus on climate risks and climate policy.
Gernot writes a monthly column for Project Syndicate and has written five books, including, most recently: Geoengineering: the Gamble, published by Polity (2021); Stadt, Land, Klima (“City, Country, Climate”), published, in German, by Brandstätter Verlag (2021); Climate Shock, joint with Harvard's Martin Weitzman and published by Princeton (2015), among others, a Top 15 FT McKinsey Business Book of the Year 2015, and Austria’s Natural Science Book of the Year 2017; and But will the planet notice?, published by Hill & Wang/Farrar Strauss & Giroux (2011).
Prior to joining Columbia as senior lecturer and serving as faculty director of the Climate Knowledge Initiative, Gernot taught at NYU, Harvard, and Columbia. He was the founding executive director of Harvard's Solar Geoengineering Research Program (2016 – 2019), and served as economist at the Environmental Defense Fund (2008 – 2016), most recently as lead senior economist (2014 – 2016) and member of its Leadership Council (2015 – 2016). Before EDF, he worked for the Boston Consulting Group in Düsseldorf and New York and wrote for the Financial Times leader writer team in London. He has been a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a Senior Fellow at the Jain Family Institute, and is a CEPR research fellow, a CESifo faculty fellow, a Faculty Affiliate at the Columbia Center for Environmental Economics and Policy, a Member of the New York City Panel on Climate Change, a Coordinating Lead Author of the Austrian Panel on Climate Change, and he serves on the board of CarbonPlan.org.
Born and raised in Amstetten, Austria, Gernot graduated from high school in his hometown before moving to the U.S. for college. He holds a joint bachelor’s magna cum laude with highest honors in environmental science, public policy, and economics, and a master’s and Ph.D. in political economy and government from Harvard, as well as a master’s in economics from Stanford.
Gernot lives in New York City with his wife, Siri Nippita, a gynecologist at NYU Langone Health and the chief of the family planning division as well as the director of Reproductive Choice at Bellevue Hospital, and their two young children.
See my preoccupations, follow me on Bluesky, Mastodon, or LinkedIn (skip Twitter, at least for now), sign up for email updates, or find me online at: Columbia Business School | Google Scholar | Leigh Speakers Bureau | Project Syndicate | New York Times | Washington Post | LinkedIn | Amazon | Bloomberg Green | CESifo and the always trustworthy Wikipedia.
- Joined CBS
- 2022
Featured Research
Electra: Decarbonizing Steelmaking Through Carbon-free Iron
Carbon Dioxide as a Risky Asset
- Authors
- Date
- May 6, 2024
- Format
-
Journal Article
- Journal
- Climatic Change
We develop a financial-economic model for carbon pricing with an explicit representation of decision making under risk and uncertainty that is consistent with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s sixth assessment report. We show that risk associated with high damages in the long term leads to stringent mitigation of carbon dioxide emissions in the near term, and find that this approach provides economic support for stringent warming targets across a variety of specifications.
Economic impacts of tipping points in the climate system
- Authors
- Date
- August 24, 2021
- Format
-
Journal Article
- Journal
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Climate scientists have long emphasized the importance of climate tipping points like thawing permafrost, ice sheet disintegration, and changes in atmospheric circulation. Yet, save for a few fragmented studies, climate economics has either ignored them or represented them in highly stylized ways. We provide unified estimates of the economic impacts of all eight climate tipping points covered in the economic literature so far using a meta-analytic integrated assessment model (IAM) with a modular structure.
Declining CO₂ price paths
- Authors
- Date
- October 1, 2019
- Format
-
Journal Article
- Journal
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Pricing greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions involves making tradeoffs between consumption today and unknown damages in the (distant) future. While decision making under risk and uncertainty is the forte of financial economics, important insights from pricing financial assets do not typically inform standard climate–economy models. Here, we introduce EZ-Climate, a simple recursive dynamic asset pricing model that allows for a calibration of the carbon dioxide (CO2) price path based on probabilistic assumptions around climate damages.
Climate Shock
- Authors
-
Gernot Wagner and Martin L. Weitzman
- Date
- April 19, 2016
- Format
-
Book
- Publisher
- Princeton University Press
Top 15 Financial Times McKinsey Business Book of 2015
All Activities
Journal Article
.
“Climate policy curves highlight key mitigation choices.”
Climate Policy
(September 16, 2024).doi: 10.1080/14693062.2024.2392744
Journal Article
.
“ Carbon Dioxide as a Risky Asset .”
Climatic Change
vol.
177
,
no.
72
(May 06, 2024).doi: 10.1007/s10584-024-03724-3
Journal Article
Burgess, Matthew G., Leaf Van Boven,
Gernot Wagner
, Gabrielle Wong-Parodi, Kyri Baker, Maxwell Boykoff, Benjamin A. Converse, Lisa Dilling, Jonathan M. Gilligan, Yoel Inbar, Ezra Markowitz, Jonathan D. Moyer, Peter Newton, Kaitlin T. Raimi, Trisha Shrum, and Michael P. Vandenbergh
.
“Supply, demand and polarization challenges facing US climate policies.”
Nature Climate Change
(January 16, 2024).doi: 10.1038/s41558-023-01906-y
Journal Article
Merk, Christine and
Gernot Wagner
.
“Presenting balanced geoengineering information has little effect on mitigation engagement.”
Climatic Change
vol.
177
,
no.
11
(January 01, 2024).doi: 10.1007/s10584-023-03671-5
Journal Article
.
“The costs of “costless” climate mitigation.”
Science
vol.
382
,
no.
6674
(November 30, 2023):
1001
-1003
.
doi: 10.1126/science.adj2453
Journal Article
Wagner, Gernot and Daniel Zizzamia
.
“Green Moral Hazards.”
Ethics, Policy & Environment
vol.
25
,
no.
3
(September 08, 2022):
264
-280
.
doi: 10.1080/21550085.2021.1940449
Journal Article
Stavins, Robert N. and
Gernot Wagner
.
“Martin Weitzman: A Gift that Keeps on Giving.”
Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists
vol.
9
,
no.
5
(September 01, 2022):
843
-850
.
doi: 10.1086/721093
Journal Article
Kanter, David R., Claudia Wagner-Riddle, Peter M. Groffman, Eric A. Davidson, James N. Galloway, Jesse D. Gourevitch, Hans J. M. van Grinsven, Benjamin Z. Houlton, Bonnie L. Keeler, Stephen M. Ogle, Holly Pearen, Kevin J. Rennert, Mustafa Saifuddin, Daniel J. Sobota, and
Gernot Wagner
.
“Improving the social cost of nitrous oxide.”
Nature Climate Change
(November 17, 2021).doi: 10.1038/s41558-021-01226-z
Journal Article
Aldy, Joseph E., Tyler Felgenhauer, William A. Pizer, Massimo Tavoni, Mariia Belaia, Mark E. Borsuk, Arunabha Ghosh, Garth Heutel, Daniel Heyen, Joshua Horton, David Keith, Christine Merk, Juan Moreno-Cruz, Jesse L. Reynolds, Katharine Ricke, Wilfried Rickels, Soheil Shayegh, Wake Smith, Simone Tilmes,
Gernot Wagner
, and Jonathan B. Wiener
.
“Social science research to inform solar geoengineering.”
Science
vol.
374
,
(November 12, 2021):
6569
.doi: 10.1126/science.abj6517
Journal Article
.
“Heat has larger impacts on labor in poorer areas.”
Environmental Research Communications
vol.
3
,
no.
9
(September 15, 2021).doi: 10.1088/2515-7620/abffa3
Journal Article
.
“Economic impacts of tipping points in the climate system.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(August 24, 2021).doi: 10.1073/pnas.2103081118
Journal Article
Wagner, Gernot, David Anthoff, Maureen Cropper, Simon Dietz, Kenneth T. Gillingham, Ben Groom, J. Paul Kelleher, Frances C. Moore, and James H. Stock
.
“Eight priorities for calculating the social cost of carbon.”
Nature
vol.
590
,
(February 25, 2021):
548
-550
.
doi: 10.1038/d41586-021-00441-0
Journal Article
Proistosescu, Cristian and
Gernot Wagner
.
“Uncertainties in Climate and Weather Extremes Increase the Cost of Carbon.”
One Earth
vol.
1
,
no.
6
(June 19, 2020):
515
-517
.
doi: 10.1016/j.oneear.2020.06.002
Journal Article
.
“India in the coming ‘climate G2’?”
National Institute Economic Review
vol.
251
,
(February 06, 2020):
R3
-R12
.
Journal Article
.
“Declining CO₂ price paths.”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
(October 01, 2019).doi: 10.1073/pnas.1905755116
Working Paper
.
Synthesis of evidence yields high social cost of carbon due to structural model variation and uncertainties. June 06, 2024.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Floods are wreaking havoc around the world. Vienna might have found an answer.”
The Guardian
.
October 02, 2024.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Tipping Carbon.”
Milken Review
.
July 24, 2024.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Don’t Slam the Door on Inexpensive Chinese Electric Vehicles.”
New York Times
.
May 15, 2024.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
Terzi, Alessio and
Gernot Wagner
.
“Averting Climate Catastrophe Requires Economic Growth.”
Project Syndicate
.
May 01, 2024.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“The Right Response to China’s Electric-Vehicle Subsidies.”
Project Syndicate
.
April 05, 2024.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“What Does Trump Mean for the Climate?”
Project Syndicate
.
March 04, 2024.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“The Ukraine War Blew Up the World’s Energy Economy.”
Heatmap
.
February 23, 2024.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“How to Assess the Outcome of COP28.”
Project Syndicate
.
December 13, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
Bataille, Chris and
Gernot Wagner
.
“What Steel Decarbonization Needs.”
Project Syndicate
.
November 21, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“How China Can Save the World – and Itself.”
Project Syndicate
.
October 30, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Taming Carbon…When the Price Is Right.”
Milken Institute Review
.
October 23, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“The Green Growth Mindset.”
Project Syndicate
.
September 23, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Carbon Capture and Delay.”
Project Syndicate
.
August 10, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“What the Climate Fight Is Really About.”
Project Syndicate
.
July 17, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“We Can’t Prevent All Wildfires. But We Can Learn From the Ones Burning Now.”
Barron's
.
June 08, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
Komanoff, Charles and
Gernot Wagner
.
“There’s Only One Way to Fix New York’s Traffic Gridlock.”
New York Times
.
June 08, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“How to Think About Climate-Tech Solutions.”
Project Syndicate
.
June 07, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
Wagner, Gernot and Danny Cullenward
.
“Get tax credits right to make clean hydrogen a boon not a boondoggle.”
Washington Post
.
April 27, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Europe Must Tax Brown and Subsidize Green.”
Project Syndicate
.
April 06, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
Wagner, Gernot and Julio Friedmann
.
“3 ways to spend Biden’s clean-energy windfall faster.”
Washington Post
.
March 03, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Can geoengineering slow climate change? We need research to find out.”
Washington Post
.
February 22, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
Greenberg, Paul and
Gernot Wagner
.
“Our City Could Become One of the World’s Greenest, but It Won’t Be Easy.”
New York Times
.
February 07, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Realism About Techno-Optimism.”
Project Syndicate
.
January 26, 2023.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“The Case for Mandating Climate-Risk Disclosure.”
Project Syndicate
.
November 24, 2022.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Who Pays for Climate Change?”
Project Syndicate
.
November 16, 2022.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“The Risky Language of Climate Uncertainty.”
OpenMind
.
October 27, 2022.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
Wagner, Gernot and Tom Brookes
.
“The High Stakes of Climate-Risk Accounting.”
Project Syndicate
.
September 28, 2022.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
Wagner, Gernot and Matthew Lewis
.
“The Next Step on Climate Action: Parking Reform.”
Bloomberg CityLab + Green
.
September 22, 2022.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
Wagner, Gernot and Wolfram Schlenker
.
“Declining crop yields limit the potential of bioenergy.”
Nature
.
September 07, 2022.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“The Clean-Energy Race Is On.”
Project Syndicate
.
August 15, 2022.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Greening Your Home Will Be Cheaper, but Expect Growing Pains.”
New York Times
.
August 12, 2022.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Climate risk is financial risk.”
Science
.
June 09, 2022.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“New Energy Imperative.”
IMF Finance & Development
.
June 02, 2022.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Is Nuclear Power Part of the Climate Solution?”
Wall Street Journal
.
January 07, 2022.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“How individual actions can combat climate change.”
The Economist
.
November 10, 2021.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“How I Greened My Prewar Co-op.”
Curbed/New York Magazine
.
August 12, 2021.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Cheaper solar PV is key to addressing climate change.”
MIT Technology Review
.
June 30, 2021.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
Brookes, Tom and
Gernot Wagner
.
“Economics Needs a Climate Revolution.”
Project Syndicate
.
June 28, 2021.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“The Climate Tipping Point We Want.”
Project Syndicate
.
May 04, 2021.
Newspaper/Magazine Article
.
“Recalculate the social cost of carbon.”
Nature Climate Change
.
March 29, 2021.
Book
.
A European clean growth mindset. Edited by .
Brussels, Belgium
:
FEPS
,
2024.
Book
Book
Book
Wagner, Gernot and Martin L. Weitzman
.
Climate Shock. Princeton, NJ
:
Princeton University Press
,
2016.
Course
B8705: Business and Climate Change
Course
B8201: Climate Change and the Energy Transition
Course
B8212: Climate Policy
Course
B7705: Business and Climate Change
Course
B7212: Climate Policy
Course
B8233: Climate Risk
Case Study
.
Stripe Climate: Creating a Market for Carbon Removal.
Columbia CaseWorks
,
2024.
Case Study
.
Electra: Decarbonizing Steelmaking Through Carbon-free Iron.
New York, NY
:
Columbia CaseWorks
,
2024.
Case Study
.
Decarbonizing voestalpine High-Performance Metal.
New York, NY
:
Columbia CaseWorks
,
2023.
Case Study
.
Clean Core Thorium Energy and the Role of Nuclear Power in the Low-carbon Transition.
New York, NY
:
Columbia CaseWorks
,
2023.
Case Study
.
The Cost to Achieve Net-Zero .
New York, NY
:
Columbia CaseWorks
,
2022.
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Bye Bye, El Nino. Cooler Hurricane-Helping La Nina to Replace the Phenomenon That Adds Heat to Earth
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Article
Is Europe's Energy Crisis Forcing a Green Industrial Revolution?
Article
5 Questions With Gernot Wagner, Climate Economist
Article
Davos 2022 and the Climate Crisis: CBS Experts Weigh in on the World Economic Forum's Priorities, Agenda
Article
Is Europe's Energy Crisis Forcing a Green Industrial Revolution?
Article
The Real Impact of West Virginia v. EPA: Q&A With Climate Economist Gernot Wagner
Article
We Can't Prevent All Wildfires. But We Can Learn from the Ones Burning Now.
Article
How to Think about Climate-Tech Solutions
Article
How I Greened My Prewar Apartment (It Wasn't Easy)
Article
There's Only One Way to Fix New York's Traffic Gridlock
Article
The Green Growth Mindset
Article
Taming Carbon ... When the Price Is Right
Article
What Steel Decarbonization Needs
Article
What Is COP28 and Why Is It Important?
Article
The Costs of 'Costless' Climate Mitigation
Article
How to Assess the Outcome of COP28
Article
Insight 2: Steelmakers and sustainability advocates alike must be willing to embrace a ‘messy middle’ as the industry transitions to a decarbonized future.
Article
Insight 3: The world needs a consensus definition of green steel (and green iron).
Article
Insight 1: Multiple technologies for producing lower carbon steel are here — including electrolysis and clean hydrogen — with each presenting its own challenges.
Article
The Ukraine War Blew Up the World's Energy Economy
Article
Decarbonizing Steel: Four Key Points from Industry Leaders
Article
The Right Response to China's Electric-Vehicle Subsidies
Article
Averting Climate Catastrophe Requires Economic Growth
Article
What Does It Really Cost to Stop Climate Change?
Article
Don’t Slam the Door on Inexpensive Chinese Electric Vehicles
Article
Insight 4: A just transition for steel should include resources for educational and training programs.
Article
How Treating Carbon as a Risky Financial Asset Reveals the Immediate Need for Emission Reductions
Article
Insuring Against Disaster: Carbon Emissions Need Drastic Cuts Now, According to New Risk Management Study
Article
Tipping Carbon: Going, Going, Gone?
Article
The Best Climate Policy Puts Carrots Before Sticks
Article
Scaling Solar: Four Key Points
Article
Decarbonizing Cement: Six Key Points from Industry Leaders
Article
Bizcast: Climate Risks, Uncertainties, and Opportunities
Article
What Does Trump Mean for the Climate?
Article
What Will Trump’s Victory Mean for the Climate?
- Case ID
- 240307
Stegra: Green Hydrogen Steel
How does a steel production plant become fully decarbonized?
- Case ID
- 240306
ELP Greenport: Scaling Community Solar
What is the future of community solar development projects and what challenges need to be addressed for scalability?
- Case ID
- 240305
Stripe Climate: Creating a Market for Carbon Removal
How can payments company Stripe move forward the carbon removal sustainability effort through advance market commitments and what are its next steps on its climate initiative?
- Case ID
- 240303
Electra: Decarbonizing Steelmaking Through Carbon-free Iron
- Case ID
- 230306
Decarbonizing voestalpine High-Performance Metal
Should an incumbent metal manufacturing company make the change to green steel and how should it address its business model to be successful in its move to carbon neutrality?
- Case ID
- 230307
Clean Core Thorium Energy and the Role of Nuclear Power in the Low-carbon Transition
Is nuclear power an attractive alternative for the production of cleaner, low-carbon energy?
- Case ID
- 220310
The Cost to Achieve Net-Zero
What are the factors that must be considered in the global transition to a net-zero carbon emission economy and who should pay for it?