Common Resources

Deep and Shallow Uncertainty in Messaging Climate Change

This post draws on a recent RFF discussion paper by RFF Senior Fellow Roger Cooke, where he explores these topics in greater detail. Cooke is the Chauncey Starr Chair in Risk Analysis at RFF and lead author for Risk and Uncertainty in the recently released IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. Present State of the Uncertainty Narrative In […]

Research Questions for the Midterm CAFE Review: Will the Footprint-Based CAFE Standard Work as Expected?

This is the third in a series of blog posts by RFF’s transportation team that addresses some of the key research questions for the midterm CAFE review. The first two blog posts in this series introduced the midterm review of the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards and discussed unresolved issues for this review about […]

Flood Insurance Claims: A Fat Tail Getting Fatter

Floods remain some of the worst disasters around the world. They cause more property damage and insured losses than many other types of events. In the US, floods are primarily insured through the federally-run National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP). This program has been making the headlines recently as Congress tries to address the program’s massive […]

What Do State Renewable Portfolio Standards Mean for Carbon Intensity?

In the last two decades, 31 states have passed renewable portfolio standards (RPS) into law that are aimed at increasing the portion of state energy that is sourced from renewable, typically non-carbon-emitting, resources. In many states, such standards were not explicitly meant to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, although given the energy sources they promote […]

Twitter Q&A Roundup: Exploring the Local Impacts of Shale Gas Development

On April 10, RFF hosted a seminar on the benefits and costs of shale gas development as experienced by local communities, titled “Exploring the Local Impacts of Shale Gas Development.” As moderator of that event, I’ll attempt to tackle some of the questions posed by our Twitter audience during the event that we were unable […]

Mixing and Matching Electricity Sector Policies

A number of concerns have emerged over the last decade about climate change, energy security, and energy efficiency, inspiring an equally long list of proposed policy fixes. The majority of these options, including renewables subsidies, performance standards, and emissions pricing schemes, apply directly to the power sector. Lawmakers can also choose to implement multiple policies […]

Flexibility and Cost-Effectiveness in Proposed Climate Policies

Achieving the goal of an 83 percent reduction in US carbon dioxide (CO2) emissionsfrom 2005 levels by 2050 will require the electricity sector—which accounts for roughly 40 percent of US CO2 emissions—to make an enormous pivot away from fossil fuels toward non-emitting sources. Policy will be required to achieve this goal. In a recent RFF […]

Preserving Flexibility

Decisions EPA is making today will have a major impact on the cost-effectiveness of its planned move to regulate carbon emissions from existing power plants. The agency has proposed and will soon finalize performance standards for new power plants. These new-source standards are a prerequisite for the planned existing-source standards, but are ostensibly otherwise unrelated […]

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 […]

Resources Magazine: Negotiating a Post-2020 Climate Agreement in a Mosaic World

As we approach the end game serious negotiations for a post-2020 international climate regime, Brian Flannery describes the difficult road ahead. Architects of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol believed it would usher in a long-term, top-down process for mitigating climate change, with a growing set of nations taking on increasingly ambitious greenhouse gas emissions targets and carbon markets playing […]