MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research (CEEPR)
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.
Putting Climate Coalitions to Practice
Carbon markets need not be identical to work together. In this new report, the Global Climate Policy Project proposes a way to compare and connect different carbon-pricing systems without forcing them into a single model. It introduces an “effective carbon cost” that measures the average burden on firms in regulated industries. It then pairs that measure with an assessment of what can reasonably be expected from each country given its income and other local circumstances.
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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Does it pay to go green? Let us count the ways.
Electricity bills are climbing, and Americans are feeling it. Rates nationwide have risen about a third since 2019, and one in three Americans says they’ve gone without food or medical care to keep up with utility bills. CEEPR Faculty Director and MIT Sloan Associate dean Christopher Knittel joined a Climate One podcast to discuss the costs and benefits of clean energy. "We should continue to subsidize rooftop solar, but we should do it in a way that's not regressive, that is not leaning harder on those homes that cannot install solar," Knittel said. Listen to the full episode at the Climate One site.
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Soaring US fuel prices deepen pains of unending Iran conflict
In Houston gas cost nearly $1.10 more on August 31 than it did on the day before the war began, according to data from GasBuddy. A one-dollar increase in prices equates to $60 more a month for the average household, said MIT Sloan associate dean and MIT CEEPR director Christopher Knittel. Rural drivers pump more gas, driving more miles in less fuel-efficient vehicles, according to Knittel. Read the full article at Bloomberg at the link below.
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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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