Common Resources

Salience, Attentiveness, and the Decision to Have a Home Energy Audit

This is the third and final post in a blog series on our survey of homeowners as part of RFF’s Energy Efficiency Information Initiative. In two earlier blog posts, we summarized some findings from our recent survey on home energy audits. In the first post, we described what we learned about the features of audits […]

Terminating Links between Emissions Trading Programs

In the absence of a coordinated global emissions market, a number of self-contained regional carbon-trading programs have formed that independently establish, track, and cancel their own compliance permits. In order to increase the cost-effectiveness, liquidity, and stability of these markets, the entities that control them may choose to link programs together in a framework that […]

What Did the 2010 Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling Moratorium Mean for the Workforce?

On April 20, 2010, the Transocean Deepwater Horizon suffered a catastrophic blowout while drilling in a BP lease in the Gulf of Mexico’s Macondo Prospect. This accident resulted in the largest oil spill in US history and an unprecedented spill response effort. Due to the ongoing spill and concerns about the safety of offshore oil […]

Taking Advice: Do Homeowners Follow Up on Home Energy Audits?

This is the second post in a new blog series on our survey of homeowners as part of RFF’s Energy Efficiency Information Initiative. The first post focuses on what’s included in an audit and how much it costs homeowners. In this post, we’ll reveal if people followed their auditors’ recommendations. In the third post, we’ll […]

Taking Steps toward Green Growth in China

For decades, China’s government has focused on economic growth and has paid less attention to the associated environmental consequences. But today, the need for environmental regulation is more widely recognized as a critical ingredient for continued, sustainable growth in the world’s most populous country. In a new RFF discussion paper, Green Growth (for China): A Literature […]

The Costs and Quality of Home Energy Audits: What Homeowners Say

This is the first post in a new series on our survey of homeowners as part of RFF’s Energy Efficiency Information Initiative. Here we focus on what’s included in an energy audit and how much it costs. In the second post, we’ll reveal if people followed their auditors’ recommendations. In the third post, we’ll focus […]

Tax Inversions and Carbon Taxes

Because the US has the highest corporate tax rate in the world, firms can save billions of dollars by attaining a new corporate address in a low-tax country without physically relocating any of their existing business. To do so, American firms simply need to acquire a foreign firm and reincorporate the newly formed company abroad. […]

Exporting the Cost of Dams

Last year, former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi proclaimed: “We will defend each drop of Nile water with our blood if necessary.” He was referring to the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam that Ethiopia is constructing, which may affect the flow of the Nile River into Egypt. A year later, talks between the two nations still have […]

Measuring the Early Effects of a Carbon Tax: Comparing Three Policies across Income Groups

Economists argue that the most efficient way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to raise the price of energy by introducing a price on carbon emissions, either through a tax or a cap-and-trade regime. A tax (or a cap-and-trade system that auctions off permits) has a secondary effect beyond providing incentives for reducing emissions: it […]

Resources Magazine: Reflections on the Oil Shock of 40 Years Ago

The 1973-1974 energy crisis produced many lessons, but Joel Darmstadter cautions that the benefits of moving toward US energy independence should not be overdrawn. In recalling those oil producers “whose embargo once brought the industrial world to its knees” (Baltimore Sun), commemorative coverage of the worldwide price shock of 1973–1974 may sometimes veer toward the […]