The Price Cap on Russian Oil Exports and the Amassing of the Shadow Fleet
Western governments imposed a price cap on Russian seaborne oil exports using Western services. To evade the policy, Russia developed a “shadow fleet” which uses no such services. In this paper, the authors use a calibrated model driven by this fleet’s expansion to assess various sanctions. While all sanctions reduce the present value of Russia’s profits, they find that the tighter the ceiling and the tighter the enforcement, the less harm sanctions impose.
Pricing Congestion to Increase Traffic: The Case of Bogotá
In September 2021, the city of Bogotá introduced a major market-based reform to its odd-even driving restriction, known as Pico y Placa. Since then, drivers have had the option to pay a daily congestion fee to be exempt from the restriction. A new CEEPR Working Paper finds that while the reform increased traffic, it brought overall benefits.
Impacts of the Jones Act on U.S. Petroleum Markets
A new CEEPR Working paper examines how the Jones Act—a 100-year-old U.S. regulation that constrains domestic waterborne shipping—affects U.S. markets for crude oil and petroleum products. The researchers find that eliminating the Jones Act would have reduced average East Coast gasoline, jet fuel, and diesel prices during 2018–2019, while the Gulf Coast gasoline price would increase by $0.30 per barrel. U.S. consumers’ surplus would increase by $769 million per year, and producers’ surplus would decrease by $367 million per year.
Beyond the Hype: The Rainbow of Hydrogen Technologies and Policies
The transition towards a sustainable energy system requires alternative energy carriers that reduce carbon emissions while meeting global demands. Hydrogen is a possible option for industrial heat, transportation fuels, and electricity production. This paper provides an overview of hydrogen production pathways, including gray, blue, turquoise, green, pink, and gold/white hydrogen, evaluating their economic and environmental impacts.
Good Spillover, Bad Spillover: Industrial Policy, Trade, and the Political Economy of Decarbonization
As a growing number of countries adopt trade restrictions to advance policy priorities, they risk creating spillover effects that increase the cost and time horizon of decarbonization. Careful policy design and strategic cooperation can help manage such spillover effects.
The economics of clean energy with Namrata Kala
CEEPR faculty member Professor Namrata Kala recently participated in the MIT Energy Initiative's regular podcast, "What If It Works?" As an economist, Namrata has considered how incentivization can alter human behavior and help policies succeed. She leverages this expertise to help us examine how the world’s most populous country, India, is thinking about clean energy and the implications of electrification on its energy demand. She also explores how economics, as well as U.S. policy shifts, might affect their trajectory. Learn more by listening to the full episode at the link below.
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Open UROP position - Summer and Fall terms
CEEPR is currently collecting applications for an open MIT undergraduate position. Wildfires in the U.S. are increasing in frequency and severity, particularly in California. While much research focuses on direct destruction, this study examines how wildfire smoke influences household migration and firm performance. Further details and application instructions can be found at the link below.
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Is the clean energy economy doomed?
Faculty Director Christopher Knittel recently guested on Make Me Smart, a podcast from public radio’s Marketplace and spoke about the reasons some policymakers are reluctant to eliminate the IRA entirely. “The world is switching to electric vehicles, the world is switching to solar and wind, and the less we do domestically, the less capability we build domestically to provide those clean energy resources, the worse off our industries will be in the future.” Listen to the full podcast here.
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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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