Common Resources

RFF/Stanford/USA Today Poll Shows Majority Support for Regulating Power Plant GHG Emissions

The first round of results from the RFF/Stanford/USA Today poll was released today and it shows that a majority of the US favors doing something to address the threat of climate change, although there is substantially less agreement about what exactly to do. There’s a lot to dig into that’s relevant to climate policy options we […]

States Can’t Take the Credit, But They Do Matter

In America, the story goes, states lead on climate policy and the federal government follows. That argument is probably overstated a bit today, but it will become increasingly true in the future. Cap-and-trade programs in California and the Northeast and renewable portfolio standards across the country are the only major policies in place aimed specifically […]

Valuing Conservation in the Context of Climate Change

In the twentieth century, flooding caused more deaths and property damage in the United States than any other natural disaster. Most climate models predict that flooding will worsen in the future, a prospect that is leading a growing number of communities to explore the use of natural areas as protection against extreme events. These areas […]

Taxing Electricity’s Carbon Emissions at Social Cost

A national tax on carbon emissions would offer an opportunity for deficit reduction and/or tax reform, as well as climate change mitigation. Economists studying taxes on environmental harms, such as carbon emissions, often suggest that the tax be set according to the damage inflicted by the last unit of emissions. In the case of carbon, […]

Two World Views on Carbon Revenues

Traditionally, the value created from pricing pollution has been directed to the regulated industry, an approach called “grandfathering.” However, there has been a growing trend, especially when pricing carbon emissions, toward auctioning emissions permits and the direct payment of emissions fees. These approaches are more consistent with the polluter pays principle and cast carbon revenues […]

Sourcing the Future of Wood Bioenergy

Some of the biggest bioenergy debates stem from a “food or fuel” problem, where agricultural lands have been devoted to growing grain as inputs for biofuels, at the cost of food production. According to a study by Searchinger et. al. of corn-based ethanol production, the large scale substitution of corn ethanol over traditional fossil fuels […]

Can Anyone Challenge EPA’s Coal Ban?

Dan Farber argued recently that coal interests would likely find it hard to challenge EPA’s new source performance standards (NSPS), even though the standards would effectively ban construction of new coal plants without expensive and unproven carbon capture and storage technology. The reason: standing. Since few if any coal plants are being built (because of […]

Recycling Revenue from a Carbon Tax

A national tax on carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is a cost-effective and efficient tool to achieve environmentally beneficial emissions reductions that will generate billions of dollars per year in revenue for the US government. These carbon revenues can serve a range of purposes. They can pay for energy efficiency investments; they can finance cuts in […]

Solving Carbon Tax Competition Issues

Whether you’re designing a carbon tax or experimenting with a cap-and-trade policy, carbon pricing affects all participants differently. Potential inequality under a carbon tax has been a particular concern for energy-intensive, trade-exposed (EITE) sectors, whose energy-heavy processes and competitive global markets make them particularly vulnerable to carbon pricing disparities across countries. Politicians acting in the […]

What Value Does a Potential Pacific Coast Carbon Price Have?

The governors of California, Oregon, and Washington and the premier of British Columbia signed a climate pact on Monday that announced the intent of two new carbon prices: a cap-and-trade system in Washington and, likely, a carbon tax in Oregon. Prices on carbon in these states would add to pre-existing ones in California and British […]