Common Resources

Twitter Q&A Roundup: EPA’s Clean Air Plan

On June 5, RFF hosted a seminar titled, “Making Sense of EPA’s Proposed Rule for Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Power Plants.” We did not have time to answer all of the questions posed by our Twitter audience during that event due to time constraints. Below are our responses to some of those questions. #askRFF […]

Research Questions for the Midterm CAFE Review: Credit Trading and Flexibility under the New Rules

This is the fourth and final blog post in a series by RFF’s transportation team that addresses some of the key research questions for the midterm CAFE review. The first three blog posts in this series introduced the midterm review of the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards and discussed important areas of research related to […]

Identifying “Known Unknowns” in the Natural Gas Revolution

Last week, my colleagues and I released a new RFF report, The Natural Gas Revolution: Critical Questions for a Sustainable Energy Future. At one point, I began referring to this document as the “Known Unknowns” report, in reference to a widely quoted Donald Rumsfeld speech. As the former secretary of defense noted, there are certain […]

Research Questions for the Midterm CAFE Review: The Fuel Efficiency Gap

This is the second in a series of blog posts by RFF’s transportation team that will address some of the key research questions for the midterm CAFE review. As the first post in this series described, US standards for passenger vehicle fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions are slated to tighten steeply. By 2025, the […]

Research Questions for the Midterm CAFE Review

Our country is about to enter the most important period this decade for the future of transportation and its associated greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Fuel economy and GHG standards for both light-duty vehicles and heavier trucks are slated to tighten, reducing not only oil use but also GHG emissions. There is significant uncertainty about how […]

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 […]

Who Benefits from Flexible GHG Rules?

US climate policy is unfolding under the Clean Air Act. Mobile source and construction permitting regulations are in place. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has developed draft final rules for the performance of new power plants. Most important, EPA and the states will soon determine the form and stringency of the regulations for existing […]

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 […]

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 […]

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, […]