In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Fernando Vidal, a postdoctoral researcher at the Polymat research institute in Spain, about technological and policy options to create a more sustainable plastics economy. Vidal discusses the greenhouse gas emissions associated with the life cycle of plastics, changes to the chemical makeup and …

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Brad Harris, the director of government affairs at Resources for the Future, about the increasing demand for electricity in the United States. Harris discusses the main sources of this surge in electricity demand, also known as load growth; the challenges that load growth poses to goals for reduc…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Lisa Rennels, a PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley, about a class of synthetic industrial chemicals used in air-conditioners, refrigerators, and other technologies: hydrofluorocarbons. Rennels discusses the proliferation of these chemicals in recent decades, the cost of hydro…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Susan F. Tierney, a senior advisor at Analysis Group and chair of the board of directors at Resources for the Future, about the future of fossil fuels in the United States. Tierney discusses the challenges of meeting climate goals while maintaining energy security, the importance of making energy…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Simon Greenhill (PhD candidate at the University of California, Berkeley) and Hannah Druckenmiller (university fellow at Resources for the Future and assistant professor at the California Institute of Technology). Along with other coauthors, Greenhill and Druckenmiller recently published an artic…

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with James Cox, a professor at Duke University, about a rule issued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that mandates publicly traded firms to disclose certain greenhouse gas emissions associated with business operations. Cox discusses how the rule standardizes the disclosures of certa…

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Lala Ma, an associate professor of economics at the University of Kentucky and a new university fellow at Resources for the Future, about the effect on housing prices in California of informing homebuyers about the risk of wildfire. Ma discusses how California classifies and discloses the risk …

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Rami talks with Jeffrey Rissman, a senior director at Energy Innovation and the author of “Zero-Carbon Industry,” a new book about decarbonizing the global industrial sector. Rissman discusses the sources of greenhouse gas emissions in major subsectors—iron and steel, chemicals, and cement—and some technologies a…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Rami talks with Heather Randell, an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota, about dams and reservoirs that have been built on Native American reservations in the United States. Reservoirs are built by damming a river and flooding an area of land; in the United States, Native American reservations have…

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Carlos Martín, a project director at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University and a university fellow at Resources for the Future, about housing adaptation and resilience amid climate change, using as a primary example New Orleans housing infrastructure after Hurricane Katrina…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Ben Cahill, a senior fellow in the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, about the Biden administration’s recent decision to pause approvals on the construction of new facilities that export liquefied natural gas. Cahill discusses the hi…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Fran Moore, an associate professor at the University of California, Davis, about what it’s like to serve as a senior economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisers (CEA). Moore discusses the function of the CEA within the executive branch of the federal government, the range of economi…

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Spencer Banzhaf, a professor at North Carolina State University, about the history of the field of environmental economics. Banzhaf discusses the development of the economic definition of value, the early influence of agricultural economists in government, the origins of Resources for the Future…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Julia Haggerty, an associate professor at Montana State University and university fellow at Resources for the Future, about engaging the public in the US energy transition. Haggerty discusses public engagement in the context of US efforts to decarbonize, the opportunity presented by a transition …

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Bernie Bastien-Olvera, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of California, San Diego, about the benefits of ecosystems for humans and the global economy. Bastien-Olvera discusses the types of benefits that ecosystems provide, methods that economists use to estimate these benefits, how climate…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi reviews developments in energy and environmental policy in 2023 and previews potential developments in 2024 with Karen Palmer, a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, and Joseph Majkut, director of the Energy Security and Climate Change Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Pal…

Earlier this month, the Biden administration announced $8.2 billion in funding for selected high-speed rail projects across the country. One major rail project that is receiving support will connect Las Vegas and Los Angeles; another will connect several cities in California, including Los Angeles and San Francisco. “America disinvested over the la…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Ann Wolverton, a senior research economist at the US Environmental Protection Agency, about how the agency incorporates environmental justice in its rulemaking and its analysis of agency regulations. Wolverton discusses the history of accounting for environmental justice at federal agencies, how …

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Isaac Opper, an economist at the Rand Corporation and professor at the Pardee Rand Graduate School, about how natural disasters can affect education outcomes for students and the resulting stock of skills in the US labor force. Opper discusses the relationship between education and skills in the …

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks about improving equity in urban park systems with Norma García-González, the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation, and Catherine Nagel, the executive director of the City Parks Alliance. García-González discusses how data and community engagement have helped Los Ange…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with David Wear, a nonresident senior fellow and director of the Land Use, Forestry, and Agriculture Program at Resources for the Future, about the ability of US forests to remove and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Wear discusses how US forests fit into emissions-reduction efforts, differen…

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Temple Stoellinger, an associate professor at the University of Wyoming, about state trust lands, which are public lands that states own and must use to raise revenue for public schools and other public beneficiaries. Stoellinger discusses how state trust lands historically have been used; the …

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Ben Storrow, a reporter with E&E News, about recent challenges for the offshore wind industry. Storrow discusses state and federal goals for offshore wind development; how factors related to inflation, supply chains, installation capacity, and tax rules can create obstacles for wind projects; and…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Jimena González Ramírez, an associate professor at Manhattan College, and Sarah Jacobson, a professor at Williams College. González Ramírez and Jacobson discuss some ways that systemic racism can unintentionally permeate research in the field of environmental and natural resource economics. They …

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Angela Parker, an assistant professor at the University of Denver, about oil and gas production on Native American reservations. Parker discusses the history of oil production on Native American lands, the environmental and economic effects of this production, Native American perceptions of the o…

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Becky Epanchin-Niell, an associate professor at the University of Maryland and a senior fellow at Resources for the Future. Epanchin-Niell discusses how climate change and human land and water use have accelerated the frequency and extent of saltwater intrusion, which is saltwater contamination…

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Emily Browne, who has worked on wildfire prevention and suppression in Alaska with the US National Park Service. On September 27, the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission released a report with recommendations for addressing the challenges that are associated with wildfire in the …

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Alexander Gazmararian, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University, and Dustin Tingley, a professor at Harvard University. They discuss how a national transition to a clean energy system may affect communities with economies that historically have depended on fossil fuel production; the moral, e…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Will Gorman, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, about the interconnection queue. The interconnection queue is the waiting list for developers that hope to connect power plants to the electric grid; regulators must first study the potential effects of connecting a plant…

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with V. Kelly Turner, an associate professor at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles, about the impacts of heat on students in US schools. Heat not only affects the body but also has implications for children’s behavior and learning outcomes. Turner also di…

In this week’s episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Victoria Sanders and Molly Robertson. Sanders is a research analyst at the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, and Robertson works at Resources for the Future as a research associate. They discuss a recent report that Sanders and Robertson have published alongside coauthors about the …

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Milan Elkerbout about how the European Union has responded to the Inflation Reduction Act. Elkerbout will join Resources for the Future as a fellow in October, transitioning from his role as head of the climate policy programme at the Centre for European Policy Studies. Elkerbout discusses the o…

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Tyler Felgenhauer, a research director and senior research scientist at Duke University, about social science issues that are associated with solar geoengineering. Felgenhauer discusses different technologies that can facilitate solar geoengineering, the risks and benefits of these technologies,…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Eric Kort, an associate professor at the University of Michigan, about methane emissions from the US oil and gas industry. Kort discusses the emissions that occur during the extraction of oil and gas at onshore and offshore facilities, aerial methods of measuring these emissions and identifying m…

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Tatyana Deryugina, an associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, about her recent work to better understand the long-term health effects of exposure to air pollution. Deryugina discusses methods for measuring the impact of pollution on life expectancy, the chronic effect…

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Priya Donti, cofounder and executive director of Climate Change AI, a nonprofit that works at the intersection of climate change and machine learning. Donti discusses various types of artificial intelligence, the applications of artificial intelligence in the energy transition and climate policy…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Resources for the Future (RFF) Research Associate Maya Domeshek and Senior Research Analyst Nicholas Roy about the Inflation Reduction Act and the emissions reductions that the law could achieve, according to projections from various energy models in an analysis they published recently in “Scienc…

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Nafisa Lohawala, a fellow at Resources for the Future who researches the effects of government policies on the transportation sector. Lohawala discusses the findings of a recent report that explores efforts to electrify medium- and heavy-duty vehicle fleets, the opportunities and challenges of e…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Shuchi Talati, founder and executive director of the Alliance for Just Deliberation on Solar Geoengineering, about the potential for solar geoengineering as a tool to combat climate change. Talati discusses the science behind solar geoengineering, democratic and inclusive processes for engaging a…

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Stefano De Clara, head of secretariat at the International Carbon Action Partnership, about the development of carbon markets around the world. Carbon markets, which also are known as “emissions trading systems,” are market-based policies that set a cap on total emissions and issue a limited numb…

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Michael Pahle, head of the Climate and Energy Policy Working Group at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, about the clean energy transition in Germany. Pahle discusses the history of Germany’s energy transition, the nation’s current decarbonization goals, the relationship between …

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Jamie Van Nostrand, former director of the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at West Virginia University and current chair of the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities. Van Nostrand discusses how the state government in West Virginia historically has supported and promoted the …

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Nikos Zirogiannis, an assistant professor at Indiana University, about excess emissions of air pollutants—emissions that exceed the legal limits. Zirogiannis discusses some potential causes of excess emissions, the health effects of excess emissions, and the gaps in policy and data that could be …

In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Silvia Pianta, a junior scientist at the sister institution to Resources for the Future (RFF), the RFF-CMCC European Institute on Economics and the Environment. Pianta discusses the influence of social and political factors on climate and energy policymaking, how incorporating these factors into …

In this week’s episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with David Brown, an associate professor at the University of Alberta, about research on the value of electricity reliability that he coauthored with Resources for the Future University Fellow Lucija Muehlenbachs. Brown discusses dollar-value estimates of how much consumers are willing to pay to avoi…

This week’s episode is the fifth and final installment of a multipart series called Climate Hits Home, in which guests discuss the effects of climate change on cities and towns across the United States and how local communities are addressing those effects. In this episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Nico Zegre, an associate professor at West V…

This week’s episode is the fourth in a multipart series called Climate Hits Home, in which guests discuss the effects of climate change on cities and towns in the United States and how local communities are addressing those effects. In this episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Lisa LaRocque, sustainability officer for the city of Las Cruces in Ne…

This week’s episode is the third in a multipart series called Climate Hits Home, in which guests discuss the effects of climate change in the United States and how local communities are addressing those effects. In this episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Kimi Barrett, a research and policy analyst at Headwaters Economics, about wildfires in th…

This week’s episode is the second in a multipart series called Climate Hits Home, in which guests discuss the effects of climate change in US cities and towns and how local communities are addressing those effects. In this episode, host Kristin Hayes talks with Kathryn Sorensen about how the city of Phoenix, Arizona, has been preparing for uncertai…

This week’s episode is the first in a multipart series called Climate Hits Home, in which guests discuss the effects of climate change in US cities and towns and how local communities are addressing those effects. In this episode, host Margaret Walls talks with Skip Stiles, executive director of the nonprofit Wetlands Watch, about how the coastal c…