Common Resources

Misplaced Obsessions

The environmental movement has long been and will remain a crucial engine behind environmental policy, but I believe it really needs to reorient itself toward policies that matter, and in the process give up on its misplaced obsessions. First, environmentalists’ obsession with reducing carbon emissions is NOT misplaced. I am not just worried, but scared […]

Using Natural Gas to Lower Fuel Costs

With low-cost, abundant natural gas now available in the United States and the promise of new fuel and vehicle technologies on the rise, an opportunity may soon exist for industry (and consumers) to expand the use of natural gas in the form of a liquid fuel for passenger cars and trucks. In new research, RFF’s […]

Ending the Export Ban: What It Means for US Gasoline Prices

Last week, top Democrats on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee requested a comprehensive review of what would happen—in terms of energy prices, consumer prices, and more—if the US were to lift its ban on oil exports. In a new RFF issue brief, together with Stephen Brown, Charles Mason, and Jan Mares, we tackle […]

Best of the Above

It looked like a reverse make-me-do-it – President Obama in his State of the Union address saying don’t-do-that-again to some of his most committed supporters. An array of groups had written to him just two weeks earlier about the failings of an “all of the above” energy policy, and the first words in his speech […]

How the Cold Snapped Clean Currents

Renewable power retailer Clean Currents will no longer provide electricity to its 15,000+ customers, as it had reliably done since 2005. Co-founders Gary Skulnik and Charlie Segerman announced on Friday that the company has shut its doors forever. Why? In a blog post to its customers, the duo explains that the recent severe cold weather […]

McKibben, Liquid Natural Gas, and the Economy

Bill McKibben makes an impassioned argument in Politico about the dangers to the economy and the environment of building a facility for liquid natural gas (LNG) exports at Cove Point, MD. His case, however, rests heavily on the inaccurate assumption that the benefits of the exports will be limited only to the natural gas industry […]

How Have Recent Fuel Economy and GHG Standards for New Passenger Vehicles Affected the US and European Markets?

In the second post of a two-part series, RFF Fellow Joshua Linn examines how recent standards have affected the type and rate of technology adoption in new vehicles. Click to read the first installment. Concerns about global warming and energy security have caused many countries to tighten passenger vehicle standards for greenhouse gases and fuel […]

Climate Benefits from the Production Tax Credit?

A year ago, we wrote about the potential expiration of the wind power production tax credit (PTC), which has helped support the US wind industry for most of the last 22 years. The PTC provides a subsidy of about $23 per megawatt hour (or roughly 30 percent above wholesale electricity prices). It was set to […]

Understanding the Tradeoffs of CAFE Standards

In the first of a two-part series, RFF Fellow Joshua Linn explains how vehicle manufacturers respond to tightening fuel economy standards. Click to read the second installment. Though the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards have been regulating the fuel economy of US vehicles since 1978, the levels of the standards were pretty much flat […]

Forty Years Later, an Oil Crisis Retrospective

Though the 1973 Yom Kippur War lasted only 20 days, the outbreak of Arab-Israeli hostilities was followed by two major events, with implications that are still debated today. The first was a politically motivated and largely symbolic initiative by a group of Arab oil producers (the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries) to form a […]