MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR)
Commentary: Reforming Carbon Accounting for Modern Power Systems
Corporate net-zero claims rest on accounting rules that cannot tell whether actions actually reduce grid emissions. As the GHG Protocol and SBTi finalize parallel revisions, this commentary argues that both standard-setters should keep attributional inventories but also require a consequential assessment, based on locational marginal emissions (LMEs), for any claim of progress toward net-zero targets, and should recognize certificates for storage and transmission investments.
Tariffs, Global Value Chains, and the Incidence of Protection: Evidence from US Automobiles
When tariffs protect domestic automakers, do domestic firms actually benefit? Our analysis reveals a surprising answer: it depends critically on firms’ exposure to imported parts. While tariffs on foreign vehicles alone boost domestic producers, extending tariffs to automotive parts reverses these gains entirely—especially for U.S. firms reliant on foreign inputs. We quantify these effects using a structural model of the U.S. auto market.
The System Value of GETs under Alternative Transmission Deployment Strategies
Grid-enhancing technologies (GETs) can increase the effective capacity of existing transmission infrastructure, but their system value depends on where they are deployed. In a new Research Commentary, we use the GenX capacity-expansion model to examine how alternative transmission-targeting strategies affect the value of GETs in a 2035 representation of the US electricity system.
Who Pays for Growth? Evidence from Data Centers and the Grid
Artificial intelligence is driving rapid growth in electricity demand through the expansion of data centers. Meeting this demand requires complementary infrastructure investment, but who pays for that investment depends on the institutions that finance, regulate, and allocate its costs. We study this question by linking facility-level data on data center entry to utility-level data on retail electricity prices, infrastructure investment, operational outcomes, and regulatory rate case proceedings across the United States.
Environmental Ambition and Economic Protectionism
Border carbon adjustments are becoming a central tool in climate-trade policy, but their environmental value depends on design. In the global steel industry, a mass-based border charge that prices total embodied emissions sends a much stronger carbon signal than a rate-based charge that prices emissions only above a benchmark. The benchmark acts like an output subsidy: it cushions downstream users, but it also encourages reshuffling, weakens incentives to abate abroad, and can shift emissions into underpriced upstream intermediates.
The Iran war has cost U.S. households nearly $2,000 each. New strikes could keep the bill climbing
Recent U.S. strikes on Iran's Qeshm Island come at a fragile moment for energy markets, which had just priced in hopes of a diplomatic exit, and as the U.S. heads into heating season. Gilbert Metcalf, a visiting professor at MIT CEEPR and a former deputy assistant secretary for environment and energy at the U.S. Treasury Department, says the strikes raise the odds of the outcome markets fear most. "The risk to global oil markets and the global economy is the potential for Iranian strikes against shipping in the Strait of Hormuz or against oil and gas infrastructure in the region," he said. "Continued strikes against Iran, albeit so-called 'defensive strikes,' only increase the likelihood of their undertaking those attacks." Read the full story at this article on Fortune.
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How Trump's energy policies helped trigger Tuesday’s election rout
The war in Iran, efforts to promote fossil fuels and attacks on renewable energy contributed to higher prices for gas and electricity that drove voter discontent. On Tuesday, voters’ frustration with soaring energy prices helped propel Democrats to a blowout, with Republicans losing control of the House and the Senate, as well as the governorships of many historically conservative states. Professor Catherine Wolfram said that launching the war was among the worst decisions Mr. Trump could have made if he was trying to bring down energy costs. "It's Econ 101 that invading Iran when they control the Strait of Hormuz is going to impact gas prices," she said. Read the full article in the New York Times.
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MIT finds billions in potential grid savings
Research by CEEPR Director Christopher Knittel, senior postdoctoral associate Juan Ramon Senga, and postdoctoral associate Chaitanya Vuppanapalli has identified technologies that could save the United States as much as $1.34 billion annually in electricity system costs by making better use of existing transmission lines. The study examined how improvements to existing transmission infrastructure could increase electricity delivery without relying entirely on expensive and time-consuming construction of new lines.
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Electricity Price Hub
The Electricity Price Hub is a partnership between Heatmap News and MIT CEEPR in collaboration with CleanEcon designed to bring much-needed clarity to the conversation around energy affordability. It is a new public data platform built to address this information gap. The hub provides month-to-month estimates of residential electricity prices and bills for utilities across the United States, from 2020 to the present. For the largest utilities, these estimates are broken down into their core components. By making this data available down to the zip code level, the hub empowers users to understand what they are paying and see how that compares to neighboring communities and states.
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Clean Investment
Monitor
The Clean Investment Monitor (CIM) is a joint project of the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR) and the Rhodium Group. The CIM tracks public and private investments in climate technologies in the United States. Through this data and analysis, the CIM provides insights into investment trends, the effects of federal and state policies, and on-the-ground progress in the U.S. towards net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.
The CIM covers dozens of different technologies and their input components across all sectors of the economy, including for clean electricity and transportation, building electrification, low-emission industrial production, and carbon management.
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Climate Action
Through Education
The MIT Climate Action Through Education (CATE) program, directed by Professor Christopher R. Knittel, has developed an MIT-informed interdisciplinary, place-based climate change curriculum for U.S. high school teachers in the following core disciplines: History/Social Science, English/Language Arts, Math, and Science.
Curricular materials – labs, units, lessons, projects – will be aligned with Next Generation Science Standards, and MA education standards. The solutions-focused curriculum aims to inform students about the causes and consequences of anthropogenic climate change, while equipping them with the knowledge and sense of agency to contribute to climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience.
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Driving Towards
Seamless Public
EV Charging
Widespread electric vehicle (EV) adoption is critical to confronting climate change – but a lack of sufficient public charging infrastructure is holding many potential EV drivers back. A team of researchers from Harvard and the MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research will work to accelerate progress on public EV charging as a gating requirement to achieving widespread EV adoption. The team will contribute by working directly with stakeholders and stakeholder groups to identify barriers to seamless public EV charging, build consensus for solutions, and advance those solutions.
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The Roosevelt
Project
Transitioning the United States economy toward deep decarbonization will have unequally distributed effects, positive and negative, across socio-economic groups, geographies and economic sectors. The concerns of workers and communities adversely affected by the transition must inform the discussion around decarbonization, associated policy changes and institutional development. The goal of the Roosevelt Project is to provide an analytical basis for charting a path to a low carbon economy in a way that promotes high quality job growth, minimizes worker and community dislocation, and harnesses the benefits of energy technologies for regional economic development.
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