Funds from this grant support a project led by Steven Hamburg of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) to spearhead the study of two critical topics related to shale oil and gas exploration.  The first is the characterization and treatment of wastewater (“flowback” fluids) resulting from shale gas and shale oil exploration.  The second is the examination of methane emissions from natural gas end users in the industrial, commercial, residential, and transportation sectors.  EDF will organize a several emerging issue workshops that will engage leading researchers in the design of a detailed set of scientific research projects related to wastewater issues and methane emissions from end users resulting in a detailed set of research questions, sampling strategies, project management plans, collaboration agreements, and deliverable expectations.  Additional grant funds will support a set of quick turnaround, small-scale, proof of concept projects to rapidly test the suggested technologies and methodologies that emerge from the workshops.

The Clean Air Act (CAA) serves as one of the main statutes under which the Environmental Protection Agency oversees a broad range of challenges, such as mobile source emissions, air quality, acid rain, and hazardous air pollution.  Better understanding how the CAA can be applied in new contexts is increasingly important given how central this statute has become to the implementation of greenhouse gas control strategies in the United States. This grant provides funds to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences to undertake an in-depth, two-year study looking at the CAA as a model for creating “durable yet flexible” energy and environmental policy.  The first year of the project will involve interdisciplinary research on five different case study applications of the CAA.  The purpose will be to identify and confirm the individual elements that have made the CAA both durable and adaptable since enacted into law nearly 45 years ago.  The second year of the proposed project will then compare these analyses to tease out common “design characteristics” emerging from the case studies.  The research will culminate in a capstone workshop and a companion public event where the results would be widely shared.  In addition, the researchers will produce a set of working papers and articles in peer-reviewed energy and environment journals and make several presentations on their findings to key stakeholders.

This grant to Richard Newell at the Duke University Energy Initiative supports the second phase of research focused on documenting and understanding local economic responses to managing shale gas and oil revenues.  Newell’s previous research analyzed the extent to which increased tax receipts are able to cover growing expenditures for municipal services in several municipalities and counties across eight states. This grant will allow Newell to expand his efforts in the states already surveyed and to expand his research to eight additional states, covering every major shale energy producing region in the country. Newell and his team will conduct over 75 on-the-ground structured interviews with local municipal managers, industry stakeholders, and other experts in these states.  They will also collect financial data from local governments and produce a robust economic analysis comparing tax collection and revenue distribution practices.  The expansion of state coverage will also allow the research team to write a set of synthesis reports that compare experiences across the United States.  Finally, Newell and his team also propose to disseminate their research findings broadly in academic and policy settings.