Common Resources

Energy Independence - What Then? (Part One: The Centrality of Oil)

This post is the first in a four-part series on energy independence and its significance (or insignificance). Click to read the second, third, and fourth installments. “By around 2020, the United States is projected to become the [world’s] largest oil producer…” so states the International Energy Agency (IEA) in its World Energy Outlook 2012, issued […]

Less Coal, More Gas, Less Carbon, Cheaper Power

Brad Plumer at the Washington Post wrote yesterday that coal power generation in the U.S. is in sharp decline—but market forces, not environmental regulation, are driving the recent trend according to analysis in a new Brattle Group report. The primary reason is natural gas prices. RFF research generally bears this out—and indicates that it should […]

Revised Maps of Shale Gas Regulation

Today, RFF is releasing a major update of our series of maps showing state shale gas regulation. The maps show 31 states’ regulations of 27 different elements of the development process, and have been some of our most popular and talked-about research products since their launch in July. Three big things have changed in this […]

The Economist, Shale Gas, and Mideast Oil

In this week’s leader on violent protests in the Arab world, The Economist gets it wrong on shale gas again: With [American] troops mercifully out of Iraq, their efforts to push the Israeli-Palestinian peace process going nowhere, and shale gas reducing their dependence on Arab oil, surely it is time for them to leave the […]

The Democratic Platform: Energy Subsidies

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 looks at the Democratic platform. Previous posts analyzed the Republican platform. As with all posts on Common Resources, this and other posts in this series reflect the opinions of the authors […]

The Natural Gas Boom and Energy Independence

My colleague Joel Darmstader makes good points on politicians’ fixation on “energy independence” and it’s emptiness as a policy goal due to the global interconnectedness of energy markets. Energy economists have been making these points for years but they’re worth reiterating. But even setting aside Joel’s criticisms, no policy is likely to achieve energy independence […]

Energy Independence and the Presidential Campaign: Illusions, Realities

Consistency may have its virtues – but only up to a point. Take the matter of energy independence—a target reflexively embraced, and claimed to be achievable (but, unsurprisingly, never achieved) by American political leaders decade after decade. This year’s presidential election is no exception, with both candidates pledging to hit the bull’s-eye. In his New […]

Falling Emissions and Falling Prices: Expectations for the Domestic Natural Gas Boom

Current expectations for an increased supply of domestic natural gas have sparked debate about how the changing electricity sector will affect electricity consumers and the environment. The latest round of commentary by Michael Levi focuses on gas’s ability to displace coal generation, and as a result, decrease emissions of greenhouse gases. But Levi suggests that […]

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 […]