As the United States is poised to enter a new era of nuclear power plant construction, it behooves us to revisit some of the controversies of the past and consider how best to deal with some of the major problems that arose once before and may confront us once again as we go down this path. A...

Why do states adopt renewable portfolio standards (“RPSs”)? Many have suggested that RPSs mark a “race to the top,” where states adopt more and more stringent regimes in an effort to compete for clean energy jobs. This article challenges that presumption. It shows, by examining empirical...

Climate change policies call for a radical technological shift in the energy sector. The huge costs of greenhouse gas emissions abatement can be scaled down only if the development of low-carbon technologies will take place at an accelerated pace. But such progress has to confront with a large...

The development of an economy based on practical solar fuels is chiefly predicated on obtaining cheap and abundant hydrogen by using photons to split water, then cooling or compressing that gas; or on combining such hydrogen with carbon dioxide obtained from abundant industrial sources and...

In the United States, renewable portfolio standards (“RPSs”) dominate as the renewable energy policy tool of choice. Feed-in tariffs (“FITs”), common in Europe and other parts of the world, thus have come to be seen by many policymakers as a binary alternative -- to promote renewable...

As renewable energy support policies continue to evolve, assessing their effectiveness is increasingly important. Today, renewable portfolio standards (“RPS”) — mandates that jurisdictions produce a percentage of their electricity from renewable energy — are one of the two leading policy...

Feed-in tariffs are extremely popular. Ubiquitous in Europe and across the globe, studies often suggest that feed-in tariffs (“FITs”) tend to outperform renewable portfolio standards (“RPSs”). The accepted logic is that this is because FITs offer certainty RPSs do not. Under a feed-in...

Investment by energy firms in innovation can have substantial economic and environmental impacts and benefits. Internal R&D is the main input and driver of the innovation process, but innovation involves other activities, including capital purchases and other current expenditures. While the R&D...

This paper studies the impact of market restructuring on the character of research and development (R&D) expenditures. Using a political economy approach, we consider the likely differences in internal and collaborative R&D activities under regulatory and market regimes, and test the predictions...

Global warming and the acute domestic air pollution in China have necessitated transition to a sustainable energy system away from coal-dominated energy production. Through a systematic review of the national policy documents, this study investigates the policy mix adopted by the Chinese...