Since President Nixon proclaimed in 1974 that the United States “will break the back of the energy crisis,” generations of American leaders have called for a sea change in U.S. energy policy. A number of solutions have been proposed, but so far the right blend of political consensus, economic benefit, and effectiveness has eluded policymakers.
To help determine a rational, effective, and cost-effective way forward, Resources for the Future (RFF) teamed with the National Energy Policy Institute (NEPI) to produce Toward a New National Energy Policy: Assessing the Options, a multi-year research effort that aims to answer a variety of questions: What policy options are available on a national scale to help reduce U.S. dependence on oil and curb our carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions? How successful are those policies in obtaining these reductions? How much do those options truly cost? And how do they compare to each other in terms of cost per barrel of oil reduced, or cost per ton of carbon reduced?
A significant challenge was to answer these questions in a consistent way for different policy types. To do this, the authors employed one of the study’s distinctive features: the use of a single model (a version of the National Energy Modeling System modified by RFF, referred to as NEMS–RFF) to examine all policies, allowing for “apples-to-apples” comparisons.
This website provides a detailed overview of the study’s findings. The foundation of the effort is a series of technical papers conducted by a cadre of notable researchers with expertise in each of the policies examined. Both the main report and the technical papers rely on runs of the NEMS–RFF model, and all were subject to thorough peer review.
RFF and NEPI remain very grateful to the George Kaiser Family Foundation and the Stephen D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation for their generous support of this work.
