Resources for the Future

Resources for the Future (RFF) seeks to improve environmental, energy, and natural resource decisions through impartial economic research and policy engagement. RFF’s large community of PhD economists and other experts provide policymakers with the best available information to make smart and equitable decisions that benefit people, their health, and the environment and economy they depend on. This three-year general operating support grant contributes toward RFF’s continued work informing smart and equitable state and federal climate policy in the United States.

The mission of Resources for the Future (RFF) is to improve environmental, energy, and natural resource decisions through impartial economic research and policy engagement. RFF works with leading national and global partners to apply an economic lens to the most important environmental and resource questions of the 21st century. This project informs the policy debate around the COVID-19 stimulus packages that are likely to be considered in 2020 and 2021 in order to encourage an environmentally sustainable and equitable recovery.

Resources for the Future delivers objective economic research, underpinned by sustained nonpartisan policy engagement that has the potential to contribute to effective policies that benefit the economy, the environment, and society more broadly. Among opportunities for sustained U.S. climate leadership, carbon pricing is largely agreed upon as the most efficient means for transitioning to a low-carbon economy. However, turning this theoretical idea into a political reality requires answering stakeholder questions: How will a carbon price affect my energy bill? What will it mean for industries in a given state? How will it affect the poor? Without credible answers to such questions, the window of opportunity for a carbon price may close. With this in mind, Resources for the Future is leading a major initiative to ensure that the next U.S. step toward a carbon price is well-designed and is supportive of a vibrant society.

In support of general operations and research on energy, natural resources, and environmental quality (over five years).