This grant provides partial support for a new report, The Future of Storage, which will bring together scientific, engineering, economic, and policy perspectives to describe the current state and future potential of technologies to store electricity and the differing roles these technologies might play in the evolving energy sector. Part of MIT’s well-regarded “Future of” series, the project will assemble a panel of top scholars from mechanical engineering, energy systems analysis, and economics to address a host of policy-relevant questions about electricity storage. Questions to be addressed by the study include what role storage might play in electricity systems over the near term (by 2030), midterm (by 2040), and long term (by 2050, and beyond); which storage technologies have the greatest potential for application over various time scales and service requirements; and what public policy, technology development, and market factors most influence the future of electricity storage. Grant funds will provide approximately one-third of the total study cost. 

The social cost of carbon (SCC) is defined as the cost to society in dollars of releasing the equivalent of one ton of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The SCC is a key input measure to almost every legally required cost-benefit analysis of energy and environmental regulation. To properly quantify the SCC researchers need to improve the estimation of damage functions, the models that lay out how climate changes affect the economy. The Climate Impact Lab (CIL) at the University of Chicago, partnering with scientists at the University of California, Berkeley and Rutgers University, is developing the next generation of climate-economic damage functions. The new functions are orders of magnitude more advanced than existing integrated assessment models, providing a spatially detailed, granular set of damage functions for over 25,000 regions globally. Grant funds will support development of the CIL model, its computing infrastructure, and salary support for one postdoctoral and two predoctoral fellows participating in the project.

This grant provides support to the Washington D.C.–based nonpartisan think tank Resources for the Future (RFF) to organize and host a conference that brings together researchers, policymakers, and various stakeholders to discuss the state of academic research about the economic, environmental, security, and policy trade-offs associated with the increased deployment of low- and no-carbon resources and technologies and to share research findings and insights on these issues developed by researchers funded through the Sloan Foundation’s Energy and Environment program. The conference will take place in late fall 2018, with nearly 100 participants drawn from academic, government, industry, and nonprofit sectors and will be structured as a series of research panels focused on topics such as energy efficiency, transportation, and transmission and distribution, which have become core areas of concentration within the Sloan Energy and Environment program. Additional thematic panels will be interspersed that advance methodological perspectives such as analyzing large-scale data sets and highlighting best practices to integrate research into decision-making. There will also be a dedicated session for students to present their work, along with a number of networking opportunities allowing participants to interact informally with one another. In addition to organizing and hosting the conference, RFF plans to record the event and potentially live-stream it. 

Funds from this grant support efforts by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) to organize a series of conferences that would each showcase six papers by leading academic energy researchers that have been written for policy audiences and that are designed to address policy questions about energy or environmental policy. The conferences, held annually, will aim to strengthen relationships between academic energy researchers and their counterparts in the policy realm, with around 100 participants expected to attend each year. Following each conference, papers will be revised and published in an annual volume titled Environmental and Energy Policy and the Economy. In keeping with standard NBER practice, no explicit policy recommendations will be made by research published in this project. Grant funds will support the hosting of the annual conference and publication of the associated research volume for the next three years.

Funds from this grant continue support for postdoctoral researchers studying energy, natural resource, and environmental economics at the Washington D.C.–based nonpartisan think tank Resources for the Future (RFF). Grant funds will support one, two-year postdoctoral researcher position in each of the next two years, and RFF will raise matching funds to support a second postdoctoral fellow each year. The RFF program has several important strengths. First, supported postdoctoral researchers will split their time between defined projects and independent research, allowing them the opportunity to build a strong list of publications that is vital to securing a longer-term university or other research position. Second, postdoctoral researchers will have the opportunity to build and expand their professional networks in policy, academic, and private sector circles, providing them with a broader range of subsequent career opportunities. Third, researchers will be trained in valuable skills like grant writing, public speaking, presenting material to policy audiences, and event organization, all of which will be critical for advancement in their careers. Fourth, RFF will draw on a deep roster of senior in-house scholars and its extended network of affiliated university faculty to provide job placement services and career guidance. To date, the placement record for postdoctoral researchers in this program has been strong. Fifth, there are no other federally or philanthropically funded energy and environmental economics postdoctoral researcher positions of this kind, making the RFF program unique in the field. 

There is substantial interest within the research community in studying the energy and environmental implications of the development and spread of new technologies. These technologies include digital sharing platforms like Uber and Airbnb, artificial intelligence and robotics, and distributed ledgers like Bitcoin. Questions abound. How might the use of autonomous vehicles for ride sharing affect vehicle miles traveled? What approaches might mediate the impact of blockchain energy use? Can digital ledger systems be used to track pollution effectively? This grant supports efforts by David Rejeski of the Environmental Law Institute to build a multidisciplinary research community of scholars interested in studying these topics. Funds will support 8 to 10 small research projects to study questions about the environmental and energy impacts of new technologies. Projects will be selected by an independent expert review panel through an open solicitation process. In addition to direct research support, this grant provides funds to hold two workshops—one at the project’s outset and the other at its conclusion—to bring the selected researchers together to share information about research methodologies, data sources, and potential challenges. It also funds the creation of a website to serve as a resource that will include informational bibliographies, publicly available data sources, and final research outputs.