In this week’s episode, host Daniel Raimi talks with Resources for the Future (RFF) Fellow Daniel Shawhan about a new working paper that he and several RFF coauthors recently published, about the value of advanced energy funding. The study assesses how government funding for research, development, and demonstration of emerging clean energy technologies can reduce the costs of deploying those technologies in the future. The authors include in their analysis advanced nuclear energy, geothermal energy, carbon capture and storage, electricity storage, and direct air capture of carbon dioxide. Shawhan and his team also estimate how bringing down these costs can benefit society by reducing air pollution, electricity bills, and more.

References and recommendations:

“The Value of Advanced Energy Funding: Projected Effects of Proposed US Funding for Advanced Energy Technologies” working paper by Daniel Shawhan, Kathryne Cleary, Christoph Funke, and Steven Witkin; https://www.rff.org/publications/working-papers/projected-effects-proposed-us-funding-advanced-energy-technologies/

“The Value of Advanced Energy Funding: Projected Effects of Proposed US Funding for Advanced Energy Technologies” issue brief by Daniel Shawhan, Kathryne Cleary, Christoph Funke, and Steven Witkin; https://www.rff.org/publications/issue-briefs/projected-effects-of-proposed-funding-for-advanced-energy-technologies/

“Benefits of Energy Technology Innovation Part 2: Economy-Wide Direct Air Capture Modeling Results” by Marc Hafstead; https://www.rff.org/publications/working-papers/benefits-energy-technology-innovation-economy-wide-direct-air-capture/

“Why Does Disaster Aid Often Favor White People?” by Christopher Flavelle; https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/climate/FEMA-race-climate.html

TextAloud text-to-speech software; https://nextup.com/TextAloud/index.html