Common Resources

RFF Feature: Voluntary Brownfields Certification Programs and Property Values

Many studies of brownfields highlight the benefits of cleanup to the site itself. RFF Fellow Joshua Linn looks at the effects of voluntary certification programs on neighboring property values. Click here to read more.

The Republican Platform: Taking Liberties

This is part of a series of short posts in which RFF scholars will analyze the environmental plank of the Republican and Democratic Party platforms. This post and others look at the Republican platform. Watch this week for a similar series of posts looking at the Democratic platform’s environmental agenda. As with all posts on […]

The Republican Platform: Energy Independence and Free Markets

This is the first in a series of short posts in which RFF scholars will analyze the environmental plank of the Republican and Democratic Party platforms. This week we’re looking at the Republican platform. Watch next week for a similar series of posts looking at the Democratic platform’s environmental agenda. As with all posts on […]

Federal Climate Regulation Beyond the Clean Air Act

After several comprehensive climate regulation bills stalled in the 111th Congress, EPA has moved to regulate CO2 emissions under its Clean Air Act (CAA) authority. But climate legislation would have preempted CAA carbon regulation, and any future law would likely require a similar compromise. It might require more - other statutes can provide regulatory authority […]

RFF Policy Commentary - Cap-and-Trade in California: An Introduction to Offset Buyer Liability

In this week’s commentary, Danny Morris and Harrison Fell discuss California’s approach to a simple problem—what happens when carbon offsets go bad (that is, when they don’t deliver promised emissions reductions)? California’s solution under its new cap-and-trade program is buyer liability: firms holding an invalidated offset have to replace it to stay in compliance. This […]

Aviation, Carbon, and the Clean Air Act

Can the Clean Air Act be used to reduce emissions from the aviation sector? Sam Grausz and I looked at that question in a recent short paper we wrote in cooperation with the Center for American Progress, as part of their Blue Skies project. This post summarizes that work. See the paper here and full legal analysis here. International […]

The Economist on Shale Gas

The Economist published a special report on natural gas earlier this month. Johnathan Zasloff is critical of the report’s article on shale gas development in Europe. His first gripe is that the report only spent a single paragraph discussing methane emissions from shale gas operations, and that even in this space the authors came to no […]

Shale Gas, Federalism, and First Principles

Who should regulate shale gas development? Today, almost all regulation is at the state level. In a July 6th New York Times op-ed, Harvard law professor Jody Freeman called for a larger federal role in the form of national minimum standards. In a letter to the NYT, the American Petroleum Institute’s Erik Milito argued the […]

RFF Policy Commentary: The National Environmental Policy Act: Enhancing Collaboration and Partnerships

This week, Lynn Scarlett writes on how NEPA review has evolved: The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) was perhaps the most significant and far-reaching of numerous statutes enacted during the 1970s, a period that some have called the “Environmental Revolution” in American politics and legislation. Most importantly, NEPA required the preparation of an […]

Mapping Shale Gas Regulation

The big decisions about how to regulate explosive growth in shale gas development (fracking) aren’t being made in Washington, but in state capitals. As has long been true for most onshore oil, gas, and mineral development, states run the regulatory show. There are likely advantages and disadvantages of this. But to try to answer that […]