Alexandra Gillies, Patrick R.P. Heller, Paasha Mahdavi, David Manley, Valerie Marcel, Lourdes Melgar, Francisco Monaldi, Greg Muttitt, Angela Picciariello, and Joachim Roth, IISD and NRGI, November 2021.

National oil companies are the “hidden half” of the global oil industry. Climate and development advocates who seek to reduce fossil fuel supply and promote sustainable economies must engage with these state-owned companies, many of which are based in countries with high levels of poverty.

Here are five ideas for engagement:

1. National oil companies are national. Engaging with them means engaging with the ambitions of their countries' governments and citizens.

2. Interests cloud perception of risks. National oil companies and their governments don't fully appreciate the economic risks associated with their investments.

3. Economic development matters. National oil companies won’t change without public pressure and international support to diversify their countries’ economies.

4. National oil companies differ. Climate and development advocates should tailor their strategies to distinct types of national oil companies, which present varying opportunities and challenges for reform.

5. Renewable energy can be an opportunity or an obstacle. National oil company investment in renewables can boost the energy transition and give NOCs a stake in it, but can be counter-productive in some cases.

Alex Laskey, Ari Matusiak, Sam Calisch, Rachael Grace, and Leah C. Stokes, Rewiring America, October 2021.

Congress is negotiating historic legislation that will invest in our families, build our communities and address the climate crisis. When it comes to the scale of the moment before us, there is simply no time left for half-measures and “next time” ambition. We must come together as a country, mobilize the scale of resources necessary to unlock the next generation of American prosperity, and secure our future for generations to come.

Without the Clean Electricity Performance Program or a carbon tax, the Build Back Better Act (BBB) needs to include additional climate investments or we will not meet President Biden’s goal to cut carbon pollution in half this decade. We need larger investments in our building sector to deliver a climate package that takes on the crisis in every sector, at scale. The reason is twofold: 1) the amount of emissions determined by our kitchen table decisions requires it; and 2) the accelerating impact of electrifying our end-use machines will result in required investments in clean electric supply.

It is time to treat the American household as the keystone of our climate infrastructure. Rewiring America proposes expanding the level of investment within the BBB in three key ways to drive incremental emissions reductions:

• Front-end consumer electrification and weatherization rebates or grants for low-and moderate-income (LMI) households.

• Individual- and business-facing tax credits to incentivize the rest of the market.

• Subsidized, low-cost financing, lowering monthly payments for all.

This memo outlines modifications that would benefit approximately 50 million households and reduce emissions by 110 MMT annually by 2030.

Leah C. Stokes, Sam Ricketts, Olivia Quinn, Evergreen Collaborative, August 2021.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned and won on a bold platform for confronting the climate crisis and building a clean energy economic recovery—including a clean energy standard to achieve 100% clean electricity by 2035. Now, Senate Democrats have included a Clean Electricity Performance Program (CEPP), an investment program designed to achieve the goals of President Biden’s proposed clean electricity standard, in their $3.5 trillion budget resolution, along with complementary investments that will help decarbonize the power sector.

In this updated report, we explain why action this year is essential for 100% clean electricity, and how a CEPP and complementary investments (all of which fit with Senate budget reconciliation rules) will unlock the rapid decarbonization we need.

The Clean Electricity Performance Program is the most powerful tool in our toolbox to reduce America’s carbon pollution and help us avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis—and the program will be a powerful driver to eliminate deadly air pollution, create millions of new clean energy jobs, and put money back in consumers’ pockets by delivering cheaper, cleaner energy. Now it’s up to President Biden and Congressional Democrats to get it across the finish line.

Leah C. Stokes, Sam Ricketts, Olivia Quinn, Narayan Subramanian and Bracken Hendricks, Evergreen Collaborative and Data for Progress, February 2021.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris campaigned and won on a bold platform for confronting the climate crisis and building a clean energy economic recovery—including a 100% clean energy standard for electricity by 2035, plus a $2 trillion investment in clean energy and infrastructure, and deep commitments to confronting systemic environmental injustice.

Congress must act on these commitments, and pass a federal Clean Electricity Standard (CES). This approach is proven in states—already one in three Americans live in a place targeting 100% clean, carbon-free power. It is popular, with more than two-thirds of voters supporting this policy. It is also a practical approach, which can ensure job creation and justice are at the center of a rapid clean energy transition.

Clean energy standard policies are a proven, popular, and practical approach to effectively drive clean energy transformation on the ground. In this report:

• We outline how Congress can use a CES to put the U.S. on a path to 100% clean electricity by 2035.

• We show how a CES can be designed to rapidly decarbonize the power sector and center equity, good jobs, and community benefits while doing so.

• We also outline a number of investments and justice-centered policies that will be required to achieve this rapid 100% clean power goal.

• And we argue that this crucial policy commitment made by Democratic leaders can and must overcome any potential legislative barriers. This includes eliminating the filibuster in the United States Senate, or pass CES legislation through budget reconciliation.

John Romankiewicz, Cara Bottorff, and Leah C. Stokes, Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign, January 2021.

Cleaning up the electricity sector is the key to economy-wide decarbonization, and electric utilities have a large role to play in making sure we are on the path toward a livable future. Many utilities have stated climate goals. However, those goals are meaningless greenwashing without utilities taking the necessary actions to decarbonize. There are three key things utilities must do to enable us to avoid catastrophic warming: They must retire existing coal plants by 2030, terminate plans to build new gas plants, and build clean energy much faster.

In this report, we examine utilities’ performance on each of these three necessary actions. Our analysis is based on integrated resource plans (IRPs) and major announcements for the 50 utilities that remain the most invested in fossil fuel generation.3These include investor- owned utilities, power authorities (like the Tennessee Valley Authority), generation and transmission co-ops, and large municipal utilities. Overall, we examine plans for 79 operating companies owned by 50 different parent companies, as detailed in the appendices. 50 companies own half of all remaining coal and gas generation in the nation — 1,310 million megawatt-hours (MWh) of coal and gas generation. We find there is a stark difference between utilities’ existing coal and gas generation (1,310 million MWh) and how much clean energy they plan to add this decade (only 250 million MWh). In other words, despite 33 of these companies having a public climate goal, there is an enormous gap between utilities’ current practices and what they need to do to protect people and the planet.

We scored companies based on their plans to retire coal-fired power plants, stop building new gas plants, and build clean energy, all of which are necessary steps to keep warming under 1.5°C. We find that, apart from a few leaders, these companies are falling short on all three of these necessary actions.

Jesse Jenkins, Leah C. Stokes, and Gernot Wagner, NYU Wagner Workshop Report, December 2020.

In March 2020, we convened a workshop, Carbon Pricing and Innovation in a World of Political Constraints, bringing together an interdisciplinary group of academic and policy experts including economists, political scientists, energy innovation scholars and policy practitioners. This report summarizes the workshop discussion.

Carbon pricing adoption and implementation faces several practical challenges. In the simplest sense, carbon pricing creates direct, visible costs on carbon-intensive industries, which are generally politically powerful. It also imposes costs on consumers, in the form of higher energy prices.

This combination of concentrated costs on key industries, visible costs to the general public, and diffuse and delayed benefits of reduced carbon emissions makes it politically challenging to adopt carbon pricing. Adoption is especially tough at the ambitious level necessary (in terms of price and covered sectors) to drive deep economy-wide emissions cuts.

Even in sectors where low-carbon substitutes are readily available and cost-competitive, from a political economy perspective, it is not likely to be the most effective tool to achieve long-term deep decarbonization, at least not on its own.

Mark Paul & Leah C. Stokes, Southern Economic Advancement Project, June 2020.

Communities in the South are coming to terms with their new reality: life in the era of climate change. The region is highly exposed to climate change impacts given its extreme vulnerabilty to increased temperatures and rising sea levels, low levels of climate mitigation and adaptation to date, and high level of inequality (GCRP, 2018; Muro et al., 2019). A recent study showed that as global warming intensifies, economic losses will disproportionately affect the South (Hsiang et al., 2017). While some warming and sea level rise are already locked in, bold action on climate mitigation and adaptation policy now can wean the region off fossil fuels, leading to a healthier, safer, and more resilient South.

In short, the South has untapped potential for economic growth and climate leadership. This report aims to inform state and local policymakers, as well as other stakeholders, about policies the Southern states could adopt to decarbonize and create well-paying jobs. While decarbonizing is front and center, equity is also incorporated throughout; as a more resilient South means not only addressing the climate crisis, but confronting the economic insecurity crisis simultaneously.

Leah C. Stokes and Matto Mildenberger, Washington Center for Equitable Growth, May 2020.

We do not have to use dirty energy that damages peoples’ lungs to power our societies. The CARES Act could have helped protect Americans’ health during this pandemic by moving us away from polluting fossil fuels. Yet rather than supporting clean energy, the law is being used to bail out the dirty fossil fuel sector. If we continue along this terrible path, the accelerating climate crisis will disrupt employment, cause property damage, and destabilize the financial system. Why use the rescue programs from the current crisis to subsidize the industry most likely to cause the next one?

This issue brief examines how the CARES Act was deliberately misapplied to the fossil fuel industry, which was already on the ropes before the coronavirus recession. We also examine how future stimulus funds could be targeted toward clean energy, which would create more and better-paying jobs to power our economic recovery. This approach would not just help us tackle the coronavirus recession, but the climate crisis as well.

To learn more, you can read the full report here.