Nature as Resilient Infrastructure: An Overview of Nature-Based Solutions

Our nation’s “gray,” or hard, manmade infrastructure is in need of repair and upgrading due to age, deferred maintenance, and the toll of more intense and frequent extreme weather events resulting from climate change. The American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)—which has graded the condition of the country’s public infrastructure as a D+ for nearly a decade—estimates direct, cumulative gray infrastructure repair needs at $4.6 trillion through 2025, with an estimated funding gap of $2.1 trillion. Infrastructure has long been an area of bipartisan agreement, and the 116th Congress and White House continue to allude to a possible infrastructure bill …

Enacting a Federal High-Penetration Renewable Energy Standard

The new white paper, Enacting a Federal High-Penetration Renewable Energy Standard: Building on Proposals to Date and Addressing Important Additional Considerations makes the case for a federal high-penetration RES that embraces the following key features:

Qualifying technologies should, at a minimum, include wind, solar, hydropower, ocean, tidal, hydrokinetic, and geothermal energy.
The required percentage of compliant electricity should be at least 50%, on a timeline consistent with climate commitments, recommendations from scientific experts, and other policy goals.
Alternative Compliance Payments (ACPs) and penalties should be sufficient to achieve RES objectives.
A federal high-penetration RES should build upon, and not preempt, …

Climate Change and Food Security: A Test of U.S. Leadership in a Fragile World

Climate change poses a considerable threat to global food security, with potentially existential economic, political, and social outcomes for humanity. As climate impacts worsen and further stress an already hungry world, the United States should claim the mantle of global leadership in responding to the impacts of climate change, double down on domestic efforts to promote climate-smart agriculture, elevate the issue of climate change and food insecurity in national security circles, and leverage the reorganization of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to further mainstream climate resilience into U.S. global food security programs.…

Funding the transition to all zero-emission vehicles

This white paper quantifies the costs, benefits, and appropriate government funding associated with the transition to all passenger zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs). It assesses the key government support programs needed, for how long the need continues, and how public expenditures compare to societal benefits as the ZEV market develops. The work also identifies opportunities to phase down government expenditures, including shifting to polluter-pay programs, adopting long-term policies with minimal outlays, and transitioning costs to the private sector.…

Sanctions, Shipping, and Oil Markets

In just over a week, the theoretical cost of taking a barrel of oil from the Gulf to Asia, in the cheapest possible way, rose by $6 per barrel. At a time when refinery margins are in single digits, this is a major blow to refinery profitability. The US administration’s decision to sanction two subsidiaries of China COSCO Shipping Energy, alongside announcements by global traders including Exxon and Unipec that they are banning the use of vessels linked to oil flows from Venezuela have effectively taken close to 300 of the global tanker fleet offline. In addition, longer sailing times …

The value of the US nuclear power complex to US national security

In this analysis, the Atlantic Council has set out to estimate the value that the civilian nuclear power sector contributes to the United States’ national security apparatus. Based on a series of inputs, this analysis and conservative estimation found that the nuclear power complex contributes an equivalent of more than $42.4 billion to US national security, as broadly defined. In other words, the lack of a civilian nuclear sector would present an immediate and significant economic shock (and impact on the labor force)—which, in turn, would have immediate and longer-term budgetary implications for the US government.…

Climate Action Playbook Brief

The American Cities Climate Challenge is an unprecedented opportunity for 25 ambitious cities to significantly deepen and accelerate their efforts to tackle climate change and promote a sustainable future for their residents.

Originally open to 20 American cities, the program was expanded to 25 cities due to the strength of the applications received.

As Climate Challenge winners, 25 cities have been accepted into a two-year acceleration program with powerful new resources and access to cutting-edge support to help them meet – or beat – their near-term carbon reduction goals. These resources include a philanthropy-funded team member to facilitate the development …

The Investment of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative Proceeds in 2017

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is the first mandatory market-based program in the United States to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. RGGI is a cooperative effort among the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont to cap and reduce CO2 emissions from the power sector.

Following a comprehensive 2012 Program Review, the RGGI states implemented a new 2014 RGGI cap of 91 million short tons. The RGGI CO2 cap then declines 2.5 percent each year from 2015 to 2020. The RGGI CO2 cap represents a regional budget for CO2 emissions from the …

2019 California Green Innovation Index

The eleventh annual California Green Innovation Index finds California will meet its 2030 climate targets more than three decades late—in 2061—and could be more than 100 years late in meeting its 2050 target if the average rate of emissions reductions from the past year holds steady. The report finds that the state needs to reduce emissions by an average of 4.51 percent annually—a three-hold increase over the 1.15 percent reduction seen from 2016 to 2017—to meet the requirements of SB 32, which raised the state’s emissions reduction goal to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.

The findings follow last …

Low-Carbon Heat Solutions for Heavy Industry: Sources, Options, and Costs Today

Recent studies indicate there is an urgent need to dramatically reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from heavy industrial applications (including cement, steel, petrochemicals, glass and ceramics, and refining). Heavy industry produces roughly 22 percent of global CO₂ emissions. Of these, roughly 40 percent (about 10 percent of total emissions) is the direct consequence of combustion to produce high-quality heat, almost entirely from the combustion of fossil fuels. This is chiefly because these fuels are relatively cheap, are widely available in large volumes, and produce high-temperature heat in great amounts.

Many industrial processes require very large amounts of thermal energy at …