Common Resources

The New CAFE Standards: Are They Enough on Their Own?

The new CAFE standards may require complementary policies to meet the ambitious goals of reducing fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. In a new RFF discussion paper, I examine the new footprint standards, their implications for changes to the size mix of vehicles, and the role of credit policies on compliance and cost-effectiveness of the […]

Resources Magazine: Ensuring Competitiveness under a US Carbon Tax

Tax exemptions, industry rebates, and border tax adjustments can help protect the competitiveness of industries affected by a carbon tax, but they are not equally efficient at achieving economic and environmental goals. In the latest issue of Resources, Richard Morgenstern, Nathan Richardson, and I examine the issues. Read more here.

Policy Options for Addressing Carbon Tax Impacts to Households

Carbon pricing remains the strongest option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and mitigating climate change. But such a policy still faces serious political hurdles in part because of the perception that a carbon tax would most negatively impact the poor. Clayton Munnings and I address the potential of a carbon tax to actually be progressive […]

RFF Feature: The Past, Present, and Future of Carbon Markets

New research explores lessons learned to date from carbon markets around the world and presents new issues to be examined in the future, such as the linking of existing markets. Click here to read the feature in its entirety.

Auction Day in California

The first allowance auction for California’s carbon cap-and-trade program is set for today. This will be the first economy-wide carbon allowance auction in the US, and is the product of a long policy (and legal) process. California’s carbon market will be the world’s second-largest (after the EU ETS). RFF’s Dallas Burtraw participated in the program’s […]

Cap-and-Trade, Carbon Taxes, and My Neighbor’s Lovely Lawn

This post originally appeared on Robert Stavins’s blog, An Economic View of the Environment. The recent demise of serious political consideration of an economy-wide U.S. CO2 cap-and-trade system and the even more recent resurgence in interest among policy wonks in a U.S. carbon tax should prompt reflection on where we’ve been, where we are, and […]

Thoughts on Stiglitz, Inequality and the Environment

One hopes the market for intellectual thought is not like the market for comedy, where the retelling of highlights exhausts the creative resource. Nobel Laureate Joe Stiglitz has been a tremendously creative thinker over his career, and his lecture at Resources for the Future on October 5 offered intellectual highlights that deserve reflection and bear retelling. […]

Econ 101: The Price is Not Right

Markets are almost always wrong, because they’re almost never perfect. The array of market flaws is well known – RFF Board member Joe Stiglitz, who gave the first laureate lecture in RFF’s 60th Anniversary series last Friday, won his Nobel Prize in 2001 for “analyses of markets with asymmetric information.” Perfect knowledge uniformly shared is […]

RFF Feature: US Energy Subsidies: Effects on Energy Markets and Carbon Dioxide Emissions

RFF researchers look at how federal energy-related spending programs and tax provisions impacted US emissions of carbon dioxide between 2005 and 2009, finding a change toward reductions in emissions over that time period. To read the piece in its entirety, click here.

Linking EU-Australia Carbon Markets Offers New Beginning and Challenges for Global Carbon Pricing

The EU’s announcement that it would link emissions markets with Australia beginning in 2015 brings a breath of fresh air to the prospect of a global price on carbon. In July, Australia introduced a tax that will transition into a cap and trade program in 2015. Currently the policy is under intense political attack. The […]