As the presidential election nears, and regardless of outcome, researchers at Resources for the Future continue to pursue work that will inspire interest, bipartisan coalitions, and progress on policy issues, given the political resilience of the topics.
Amid the uncertainty that the coming elections bring, we at Resources for the Future (RFF) can predict three things with confidence. First, the upcoming presidential and congressional elections will matter. The results will steer the course of federal policy for at least the next four years, with enormous consequences for climate change, environmental policies, industrial policies, environmental justice, and virtually all matters of public policy.
Second, regardless of the election outcomes, some topics will be “politically resilient,” retain bipartisan interest, and continue to present opportunities for meaningful progress. In our discussions of which topics are likely to fall into this category, the list grew quickly, including emissions-reducing policies that raise revenue, permitting reform, wildfire mitigation, disaster-resilience strategies, critical minerals, and others.
Third, we can expect to see a continued need for independent research that informs policy—on both sides of the aisle, at the federal and state levels, and in the private sector—as decisionmakers consider how to address these challenges. The long time horizon for policy development means that such research efforts should target challenges that are ready today for consideration by policymakers, while bringing to the surface any looming challenges and solutions of the future.
This article will discuss just some of the politically resilient issues at play and how RFF is providing research that’s relevant to these topics.
Revenue Raisers
Many provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017 are set to expire or become less generous in 2025, which effectively will serve as a tax increase compared to the status quo across multiple parts of the tax code. Regardless of election outcomes, policymakers of both parties likely will wish to preserve aspects of the TCJA, motivating members of both parties to look for policy agreement. The Congressional Budget Office and Joint Committee on Taxation estimate that extending all the TCJA provisions would cost $3.5 billion in the period between fiscal years 2023 and 2033, suggesting that policies which raise substantial revenue will be needed.
For policymakers who are interested in addressing climate change, one policy approach that both raises substantial revenue and addresses climate goals is a carbon fee. The relative merits of carbon fees have been recognized by members of both parties in legislation that’s been introduced, but an expansive carbon fee has never received full consideration by Congress. Some have argued that the need for bipartisan agreement on raising revenues to address the expiring provisions of the TCJA, and to address the continued worsening effects of climate change, will provide a new context in which carbon fees may be considered. RFF’s Carbon Pricing Initiative has provided ongoing technical assistance to policymakers as they develop carbon-fee proposals; its publicly available carbon pricing calculator has modeled and comprehensively tracked the effects of introduced legislation.
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A carbon border adjustment is another approach that could raise revenues while helping to reduce emissions and ensure US industrial competitiveness. These multifaceted goals suggest that the idea will be of continuing interest. Under a carbon border adjustment, tariffs are applied at the US border to recognize the relative emissions profiles of imported goods compared to their domestic alternatives. The European Union already has implemented such a border adjustment, and members of both parties in the United States have introduced border adjustment legislation.
For example, Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) introduced the Foreign Pollution Fee Act, which aims to “hold China accountable for their lack of environmental standards while expanding domestic production, increasing opportunities for the American family, and decreasing global emissions.” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and cosponsors introduced the Clean Competition Act, which would pair a border tariff with a fee on emissions from domestic industry above a declining benchmark. RFF has been a leading research entity that’s informed the design of border adjustments; we have written extensively on the topic, including a detailed comparison of potential domestic approaches and the EU program and a Border Carbon Adjustments 101 explainer.
Several other designs of carbon and environmental fees can be considered by policymakers at the federal and state levels. For example, cap-and-trade programs can raise revenues through actions that facilitate deficit reduction, refunds to constituents, or investments in other programs. In recent years, RFF has authored reports or provided comments on cap-and-trade programs in California; New York; Maryland; Oregon; Quebec; and the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, a cooperative cap-and-trade program that covers 11 US states.
Permitting Reform
Challenges related to the permitting process for energy infrastructure projects—including building transmission lines, putting in pipelines, and interconnecting renewable energy resources on the electric grid—have been widely recognized as a major barrier to the energy transition.
For example, Will Gorman, a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, shared on an episode of the Resources Radio podcast that the typical time to connect a new power plant to the grid has doubled in the past few years. Each month that a project is delayed increases costs and often increases carbon emissions as utilities are forced to maintain older, higher-emitting generators until replacements are connected.
The permitting challenges can be interrelated, which complicates efforts to understand and address them. For example, part of the reason that interconnecting the grid requires increasing amounts of time is because of insufficient construction of the transmission network, which itself can be partly attributed to obstacles related to permitting and planning.
Permitting renewable energy projects specifically also can pose major challenges, as noted by Katie McGinty, the vice president and chief sustainability and external relations officer at Johnson Controls, and RFF Board Member Jim Connaughton on the Resources Radio podcast. Also, RFF’s Art Fraas and colleagues provide examples through their research that explores the effects of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on solar deployment. They find that less than 10 percent of all solar projects that they tracked for the project required review for compliance with NEPA. This small number of projects generally completed NEPA review within two years, well below the average of 4.5 years reported for all infrastructure projects. However, the researchers noted significant delays for projects that occurred prior to the start of the NEPA process, which could be attributable to preparation for NEPA review, and which complicates an ability to understand the effects of NEPA overall. Similar permitting challenges exist for other energy projects, such as onshore wind, offshore wind, nuclear, hydrogen, and other sources of lower-polluting energy, along with pipelines to move carbon dioxide to permanent storage and connect clean hydrogen producers with end users.
Credit: Thorsten Schier / Shutterstock
We observe bipartisan recognition that the permitting and interconnection process should be reformed to address multiple objectives, including achieving energy security, reducing susceptibility of the grid to extreme weather, and expanding clean energy. More than a dozen bills have been introduced by members of both parties to improve the permitting process, and certain reforms were included as a part of the bipartisan Fiscal Responsibility Act. In July of this year, Senators Joe Manchin (I-WV) and John Barrasso (R-WY) introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024, affirming their bipartisan commitment to reforming the permitting process. Though any bipartisan legislation is unlikely to be passed before the election, interest in the topic is likely to continue, and this proposal and others could serve as the basis for action in the lame-duck session or for future legislation.
A key aspect of any potential compromise on permitting reform will be an understanding of the potential overall effect on greenhouse gas emissions. For example, expediting the permitting of oil and gas infrastructure could result in additional emissions, assuming that the new infrastructure is not equipped with carbon capture and sequestration technology. By the same token, reforms that promote the expansion of electricity transmission could reduce emissions by increasing renewable electricity. A great explanation of the infrastructure debate can be found in a recent Common Resources blog post about the pause in approvals of facilities that export liquefied natural gas.
Policymakers will need to understand the net effects on emissions of both types of policy to inform their votes. However, the policy discussion to date around permitting reform has been far less informed by analysis than other legislation such as the Inflation Reduction Act. This lack of analysis is attributable to a lack of data; gaps in our understanding of these types of policy interventions; and shortcomings in existing tools, such as energy system models that typically are used to support policymaking. In 2023, RFF initiated its Obstacles to Energy Infrastructure project, which aims to address each of these issues, improve the ability of the broader modeling community to analyze these policies, and inform ongoing policy discussion. Through our own analysis and a set of commissioned papers by others, RFF will provide the next administration and Congress with insights on permitting reform, regardless of the specific outcomes of the election.
Wildfire Prevention and Insurance
The damage wrought by excessive wildfires does not stop at arbitrary political borders, nor will addressing these negative impacts be affected directly by the outcome of the upcoming election. Therefore, it makes sense that wildfire prevention attracts bipartisan interest.
For example, House Committee on Natural Resources Chair Bruce Westerman (R-AR) and Representative Scott Peters (D-CA) have introduced bipartisan legislation, the Fix Our Forests Act, to prevent and mitigate catastrophic wildfires.
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RFF is a leader in providing quantitative analysis on the effects of wildfires and tools to mitigate their spread. For example, RFF recently published a working paper on engaging the private sector in forest fuel removal on federal lands to reduce wildfire hazards. Through this paper, we find tangible ways, under current market conditions, to dramatically expand areas of fuel-reduction treatments and reduce fire hazards. Another recent RFF report further investigates the potential for adding incentives in the wood-products market that could leverage federal appropriations and expand the scale of wildfire mitigation. In yet another working paper (forthcoming in the peer-reviewed journal Review of Environmental Economics and Policy), RFF Fellow Matthew Wibbenmeyer explores the negative effects of wildfire smoke on public health, the economy, and human well-being. In the paper, Wibbenmeyer also discusses areas that policymakers should prioritize to minimize damage from wildfire smoke, such as land management activities and air-quality regulations. RFF is continuing to expand its work on wildfire mitigation, including analyzing the cost-effectiveness and carbon impact of different mitigation measures.
The damage wrought by excessive wildfires does not stop at arbitrary political borders, nor will addressing these negative impacts be affected directly by the outcome of the upcoming election.
A related topic with bipartisan interest is wildfire insurance. As wildfires are growing larger and more prevalent, the cost of homeowners insurance is increasing and private insurers are exiting markets entirely, especially in Western states. RFF recently published a paper on lessons for wildfire insurance that can be drawn from experiences with the National Flood Insurance Program.
Natural Disaster Risk and Resilience
Like wildfires, natural disasters more broadly do not make distinctions based on election outcomes, leading to bipartisan support for mitigating their impacts. For example, in 2021, Congress passed the Safeguarding Tomorrow through Ongoing Risk Mitigation Act, which authorizes the Federal Emergency Management Agency to provide grants to states for resilience revolving loan funds. In 2022, Congress passed the Community Disaster Resilience Zones Act, which directs the emergency agency to create and maintain a list of designated census tracts that are most at risk for disasters and prioritize those tracts for federal spending on resilience measures. Both bills passed with bipartisan support. A current bill, the National Coordination on Adaptation and Resilience for Security Act, also has strong bipartisan support. As natural disasters continue to intensify, legislative interest is likely to grow across the political spectrum in the topic of risk mitigation and disaster recovery.
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Decades ago, Congress also showed bipartisan recognition of coastal hazards and support for national coastal resilience policies. Worried about the growing cost of natural disasters to the federal government, Congress passed the Coastal Barrier Resources Act in 1982. The law created a system of coastal lands along the Atlantic and Gulf Coasts where federal spending on infrastructure and disaster aid is prohibited, and property owners do not have access to flood insurance through the National Flood Insurance Program. Recent research by RFF scholars shows that the removal of these implicit subsidies to development has dramatically reduced community exposure to risk and has reduced the cost of disasters. Development on lands in the Coastal Barrier Resources System declined by 83 percent, and flood insurance claims in counties that contain the lands declined by 8 percent ($167 million per year). Importantly, these resilience benefits are being realized at no cost—in fact, at a negative cost (i.e., actually earning revenue)—to the federal government.
RFF is ready to support bipartisan efforts on this general topic through the deep expertise of its experts in natural disaster risk and resilience. Recently published work in this space includes papers on community responses to flooding in risk-mitigation actions, the local economic impacts of buyout and acquisition programs, and the impact on local economies of sea level rise and coastal flooding.
Critical Minerals for the Energy Transition
Critical minerals are foundational to growing economic sectors, including battery production, electric-grid components, semiconductors, and other energy technologies. In recent years, members of both political parties have highlighted the importance of the United States in ensuring sustainable, reliable, and cost-effective access to these minerals. In June this year, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing during which members of both parties offered support for bolstering US procurement of critical minerals.
Concerns around access to critical minerals are exacerbated by the relatively small amount of extraction and processing that happens domestically. This low access to domestic resources not only creates supply risks that imperil goals for rapid and cost-effective electrification of the US economy; it also has implications for the costs of domestic manufacturing and job growth, issues which have been addressed in recent restrictions on tax credits and increased taxes on vehicle imports. Thus, regardless of election outcomes, the next administration and Congress are expected to continue investing in policies that spur the development of critical minerals in the United States and among its allies.
Credit: Sesan13 / Shutterstock
RFF similarly has invested resources in the topic of critical minerals. In 2024, RFF Fellow Beia Spiller launched the Critical Minerals Research Lab, which will foster interdisciplinary research and partnerships among PhD students on this topic. Spiller also has hosted webinars on the role of technological innovation in helping overcome some of the challenges in the critical mineral supply chain and on community engagement around critical mineral mining. These webinars explore the policies and research that are needed to ensure a sustainable, reliable, and cost-effective supply chain for critical minerals. Spiller also has coauthored a report with RFF Fellow Michael Toman and Colorado School of Mines PhD student Sangita Kannan on the role of critical minerals in electrifying the transportation sector. One of the main findings presented in the report is that, to increase the reliability of critical mineral supplies, ramping up the domestic production and processing of critical minerals will not be enough; the United States also will need to cooperate with other countries to diversify its supply chain.
Research, Development, and Program Evaluation
Broad bipartisan support can bolster the US government’s role in the research and development (R&D) of energy technologies. The Biden administration has promoted its investments in energy R&D, particularly as related to clean energy technologies, while Congress has a long record of promoting energy-conservation technologies. While the scope, focus, and details of R&D programs will vary considerably based on the election results, any scenario will come with a desire to invest in energy-related R&D and ensure that funds are spent as effectively as possible.
Considering investment in energy technologies, RFF recently issued a report that evaluates the use of “demand-pull” innovation policies to help stimulate work on promising, but unproven, technologies. Regarding the cost-effective investment of federal funding, RFF has deep expertise in the empirical evaluation of R&D programs. Last year, several RFF researchers organized a workshop and published a report on tracking and evaluating R&D programs that are administered by the US Department of Energy. Starting this summer, RFF researchers will extend this research to develop a program-evaluation system based on the findings in that report.
Conclusions
Without a doubt, this year’s US elections will have a major impact on energy and environmental policy. Public policy will be determined by the election for several contentious and politicized issues, most notably for how the federal government confronts the issue of climate change for the next four years. Even the issue areas that we have discussed here as politically resilient will be couched in different contexts depending on the outcome of the elections.
But regardless of outcome, demand will persist for unbiased economic analysis and innovative policy options on important issues relating to energy and the environment. RFF is busy researching these topics so that we can be prepared to inform the next administration and Congress.
Brad Harris is the former director of government affairs, Alan Krupnick is a senior fellow, Kevin Rennert is a fellow, Beia Spiller is a fellow, Margaret Walls is a senior fellow, and David Wear is a nonresident senior fellow at Resources for the Future.
A version of this article appeared in print in the Fall 2024 issue of Resources magazine.
