The Red and the Black: Countering Green-Power Cost Creep with Carbon Pricing
Decarbonization of electricity supply is a cornerstone of U.S. and, hence, global efforts to phase out fossil fuels and eliminate their carbon emissions. Key to this endeavor is rapid deployment of large-scale wind and solar farms and nuclear power stations. However, expectations that these technologies would scale broadly and easily are being called into question by cancellations of notable projects including a giant wind farm off the coast of New Jersey and a highly touted "small modular reactor" facility in Idaho. Our project will determine and quantify the key "cost drivers" behind these and other green-power cancellations and evaluate which are likely to be permanent and which will be transitory. We will also assess the extent to which robust carbon-emissions pricing could return these green projects to profitability by strengthening their revenue stream and helping the developers rout the "NIMBYs" who are hamstringing project schedules and eroding their bottom lines.
Purpose: Economic imbalances: "The Red and the Black: Countering Green-Power Cost Creep with Carbon Pricing" will determine why ambitious clean-energy projects are succumbing to cost pressures while the fossil fuel supplies they would supplant are largely unscathed.
Destroying or impairing the free-market system: Notwithstanding the profusion of subsidies available under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, the U.S. economic system is failing to reward clean-energy projects to the full extent of their carbon reductions. Our project will determine the extent of that failing and the magnitude of carbon reductions that could be achieved by solving it.
Market-based solutions: As noted, monetizing the value of clean-energy projects' carbon reductions will improve their profitability. But by how much? No one has quantified that impact. "The Red and the Black: Countering Green-Power Cost Creep with Carbon Pricing" will develop a methodology for doing so and will estimate its magnitude.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

Compelling Fossil Fuel and Associated GHG Pollution Phase Out Under Existing US Law
Advocacy, research, and legal action to secure a wholesale change in federal climate policy consistent with US obligations under domestic and international law.
Purpose: Major fossil fuel companies domiciled or operating in the US continue to freely produce, process, promote, and distribute their products in commerce (including internationally) for use in energy generation, with virtually complete disregard for the costs that are in the process imposed on humanity and the environment.
CPR Initiative's major initiative will (a) require the US EPA to impose a rising fee on oil, gas and coal production while it also (b) fashions a rule to phase out such fuels within reach of domestic law, and (c) compels the major fossil fuel companies to remove, or pay to remove, a share of legacy emissions for which they bear substantial responsibility.
The imposition of these obligations would align US climate policy with what is required, albeit without sufficient enforcement assurance, pursuant to the final communiqué of COP 28 (December 2023), namely a "global effort aimed at transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems.”

• Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

Clean-up expedition to plastic-polluted Henderson Island.
1. Return site visit to Henderson Island to complete work interruped by COVID Pandemic. 2. Support efforts around "circular economy" solutions for plastic waste. 3. Speaking engagements to message need to reduce plastic pollution at the source.
Purpose: #1: investigate the causes of economic imbalances – the project focuses on the economic imbalance of “externalities” from plastic production and unaccounted for impacts on ecosystem services in the oceans. Additionally, the project focuses on the overall reduction of plastic production. Most plastic is made from petrochemicals, which negatively impact climate change – reducing plastic production overall (either through “source reduction” or “circular economy” solutions) ultimate lowers the climate change impacts.
#4: explore and develop market-based solutions – the project is heavily focused on market-based solutions for plastics, including ways that ocean plastic pollution cleanups can become self-sustaining, rather than relying on philanthropic dollars to cover the “externalities” of pollution cleanup that plastic producers push to others in the supply chain of plastic consumption.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

National Wildlife Federation Conflict Resolution Program
After decades of conflicts between wildlife and public land livestock grazing in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem, NWF entered the scene in the early 2000’s with a novel approach to ameliorate these conflicts. Over the last two-plus decades, staff from the Wildlife Conflict Resolution program (WCR) refined a strategy that compensates ranchers for voluntarily waiving their livestock permits, thereby removing their livestock from those conflicts grazing allotments. NWF’s grazing retirement work benefits myriad species, but our primary focus is to enable the expansion of large carnivores like wolves and grizzlies, bighorn sheep, ESA listed species and improving fisheries across multiple ecoregions. The geographic focus of this proposal is the Southern Rockies, Colorado Plateau including Utah and the Great Basin. More specifically, we are requesting support for the third year of our work in the Grand Staircase- Escalante and Bears Ears National Monuments.
Purpose: Beginning in 2001, NWF began using a market- based approach that recognized the economic value of grazing permits and offer to compensate ranchers for waiving their permit. We then receive assurances for from the agency that the allotment will not be restocked with livestock. In an effort to apply our model to new landscapes and to continue to innovate, we will adapt our allotment retirement model in Grand Staircase- Escalante National and Bears Ears National Monuments by testing what we are calling "AUM buy- downs." We should add that we are currently pursuing opportunities in both Monuments to fully retire several grazing allotments.

• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

New Tool, New Solutions for Decarbonizing Calif & Georgia Grids
This project will use a unique new computer-based tool to investigate how two states, California and Georgia, can successfully decarbonize their electric grids by introducing nuclear power, a reliable, emission-free energy source. The electric grids in these states will need dispatchable emission-free resources to assure a reliable future grid. This project will describe the size, output requirements, and cost of these resources in these two contrasting case studies.
Purpose: Modern industrial, technological society requires a reliable electric system. We now understand that, to be sustainable, it must also be one which does not rely on burning fossil fuels. This project will describe the requirements for emission-free dispatchable resources in the states of California and Georgia, offer roadmaps for creating the kinds of electric grids that can sustain the economies of these states into the future.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

Pricing Carbon Initiative Dialogues, Public Forums, CBAM Project, and Capacity Building in 2024
The Pricing Carbon Initiative (PCI) will continue with its mission, to build support for bipartisan carbon pricing solutions, designed to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, make US goods more competitive with nations imposing Carbon Border Measures, and foster understanding and cooperation between a wide range of organizations and opinion leaders. Specifically, the Walker Foundation funding this year will assist PCI, begun in 2011, with projects informed by the day-long Pricing Carbon Dialogue on January 23, at Brookings Institution. That work will involve virtual Dialogues, public forums, the “Convening the Conveners” project (seeking viable Carbon Border Measure opportunities) and overall PCI capacity building.
Purpose: 1) PCI focuses on policies that correct the economic distortions resulting from the free dumping of carbon pollution into Earth's atmosphere and oceans.
2) While focusing on U.S. domestic legislation, we address design elements that transparently link with a global carbon pricing system and foster global economic sustainability.
3) A robust economic consensus suggests the need to price in the externalities associated with fossil fuel burning. Otherwise, the costs of climate change threaten to undermine and destroy global economic stability.
4) Policies to price carbon pollution will take advantage of existing energy markets to correct price signals in the use of fossil fuels that ignore the social costs of carbon. Negative externalities not included in prevailing models, such as the acidification of oceans, must be included in the mix. Pricing carbon emissions can correct the distortion in energy markets whereby fossil fuels are favored over low-carbon alternatives.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
• Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

A Carbon Tariff (CBAM) in the U.S. – A path forward after the 2024 election
Project will explore the feasibility of a carbon tariff in the U.S. after the election.
Purpose: Climate change is one of the most important challenges mankind is facing and it is therefore important to find ways to address it through regulation and harnessing the power of markets. The Center on Regulation and Markets (CRM) at the Brookings Institution proposes a project that would build on our previous workshop held in-person at Brookings on April 11 discussing how the U.S. could implement a CBAM (generously funded by the Walker foundation). The workshop was a great success and has spurred numerous follow-up conversations, and ideas and potential initiatives within the expert community that attended the workshop.
We propose a full day in-person workshop at Brookings after the 2024 elections to further discuss what a path forward would look like in the U.S. for a carbon tariff within the newly constituted Congress and Presidential Administration. We believe that this is critical work as the chances for a carbon tariff in the U.S. are higher now than ever before.

• Explores and develops market-based solutions.