About the Environment, Energy, and Economic Development Program
ISE's Environment, Energy, and Economic Development program (EEED) conducts research and analysis for federal, state, non-profit, and private-sector clients on the interrelated issues of the environment, natural resources, energy, and economic development. Projects address environmental quality and regulation, energy resources and systems, water resources and systems, climate, agriculture, oceans, natural hazards and disasters, and economic development.
Selected News and Publications
RAND helped Louisiana develop its draft 2012 Coastal Master Plan to guide the state's coastal investments and help its coastal citizens plan for the future. The plan strikes a balance between providing immediate relief to hard hit areas and laying groundwork for large-scale efforts.
The results from Montgomery County demonstrate that an integrative housing policy can be an effective form of school policy for disadvantaged children, writes Heather Schwartz.
CUBE 2.0, an update of the 2010 release of the 1.0 version, allows users to estimate the "farm-to-gate" greenhouse gas emissions of biomass feedstocks for energy production, as well as the uncertainty in these emissions.
Biomass is an increasingly important source of electricity, heat, and liquid fuel. One near-term option for using it to generate electricity is to cofire biomass in coal-fired electricity plants. Factors to consider are plant-site modifications, changes in operations, costs, and logistical issues with delivering biomass to the plant.
Achieving the potential economic and national security benefits offered by alternative fuels requires that their domestic production must be an appreciable fraction of domestic demand for liquid fuels. Alternative fuels derived from oil shale and coal have the potential to meet that important criterion.
U.S. power plants seek to diversify their fuel sources and biomass energy is a renewable resource that generally has lower life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions than fossil fuels. This model estimates the cost and availability of biomass energy resources from U.S. agricultural lands from the perspective of an individual power plant.
The federal government could fully fund its surface transportation infrastructure needs by levying a percentage tax on crude oil and imported refined petroleum products.
To break the impasse over how to deal with spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants policymakers should focus on how various waste management strategies address societal priorities related to nuclear energy.
Limiting climate change requires a revolution in the way the global economy generates and consumes energy. It is becoming increasingly clear that the current diplomatic approach should be redesigned to meet this immense political, technical, and social challenge, writes Robert J. Lempert.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ended a voluntary national program that encouraged facilities to improve all aspects of their environmental performance. The significant environmental challenges that the U.S. faces require it to continue to seek complements to traditional regulatory approaches.
Ambassador Charles Ries discusses how energy efficiency in buildings affects energy security and climate change in "Improving the Energy Performance of Buildings: Learning from the European Union and Australia" on April 12, 2010.
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