Exploring the feasibility of a CBAM in the USA
Project will explore the feasibility of a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism in the U.S.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

The Red and the Black: Countering Green-Power Cost Creep with Carbon Pricing
Decarbonization of electricity supply is a cornerstone of U.S. and, hence, global efforts to phase out fossil fuels and eliminate their carbon emissions. Key to this endeavor is rapid deployment of large-scale wind and solar farms and nuclear power stations. However, expectations that these technologies would scale broadly and easily are being called into question by cancellations of notable projects including a giant wind farm off the coast of New Jersey and a highly touted "small modular reactor" facility in Idaho. Our project will determine and quantify the key "cost drivers" behind these and other green-power cancellations and evaluate which are likely to be permanent and which will be transitory. We will also assess the extent to which robust carbon-emissions pricing could return these green projects to profitability by strengthening their revenue stream and helping the developers rout the "NIMBYs" who are hamstringing project schedules and eroding their bottom lines.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

US Forest Carbon Pricing Initiative
With support from Walker Foundation, CSE will continue to advance its goal of including the logging and wood products sector in federal, state, and local climate action plans and regulation of this sector’s climate impacts through market-based solutions. At the federal level we are participating in new regulatory processes initiated by Executive Order 14008 (climate smart forestry) Executive Order 14072 (mature and old growth forests), and the US pledge to end deforestation and forest degradation by 2030. At the state level, we are focusing efforts on executive actions by governors in North Carolina, Maine, Oregon and Washington. In addition, the Forest Carbon Coalition, co-directed by CSE, is mobilizing scientific, community, and conservation organizations to promote climate action agendas at both levels that includes accounting for logging and wood products sector emissions, a forest carbon tax and reward program and other market-based solutions.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

Fossil Fuel Risk Bonds - From Vision to Reality
As a result of Walker Foundation’s sustained investment in CSE’s Fossil Fuel Risk Bond (FFRB) program we have three separate rulemaking processes underway in Oregon and Washington to implement the policy concept on the ground. The first involves protecting frontline communities living near Portland’s Critical Energy Infrastructure Hub from catastrophic explosions and massive oil spills likely to occur in the event of a worst-case earthquake disaster. The second involves strengthening financial assurance rules that have been on the books but never enforced for oil tankers and oil facilities along Puget Sound. The third is seeing King County Washington’s adoption of the FFRB concept to the finish line through an ordinance fully protecting taxpayers from the risks and costs of fossil fuel infrastructure, including its eventual abandonment. Our request in 2023 is to concentrate efforts on these three processes and, in the meantime, build a replicable model for counties across the nation.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

Compelling Fossil Fuel and GHG Pollution Phase Out Under Existing US Law
Advocacy, research, and legal action to secure a change in federal policy consistent with US obligations under domestic and international law

• Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

Global Warming in the Pipeline
Disseminate critical information to the public, especially young people, and policymakers on global climate change and its implications for required actions, including a rising tax on carbon and nuclear power.

• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

Donlin Gold's Energy Demands for Dwindling Cook Inlet Gas
The Donlin Gold mine would be a massive open-pit complex next to the Kuskokwim River in southwest Alaska, and the natural gas pipeline needed to fuel the mine would cut a swath from Cook Inlet, over the Alaska Range, to the mine site 315 miles away. In 2022, the dominant gas supplier in Cook Inlet, Hilcorp, announced that it no longer has confidence that it will be able to continue to meet Cook Inlet energy demand as current utility contracts expire; meanwhile, Donlin Gold is banking on getting its power from Cook Inlet. Inletkeeper worked with an Alaskan economist to analyze the impact Donlin will have on gas prices for Cook Inlet residents and to highlight the economic imbalances of corporate energy demands on residential and local business users.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.

Clean-up expedition to plastic-polluted Henderson Island.
1. Return site visit to Henderson Island to complete work interruped by COVID Pandemic. 2. Support efforts around "circular economy" solutions for plastic waste. 3. Speaking engagements to message need to reduce plastic pollution at the source.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

Wildlife Conflict Resolution and Western Waters Program 2023/2024
The NWF Wildlife Conflict Resolution program resolves conflicts between wildlife and livestock through the market-based approach of compensating ranchers for retiring high conflict grazing leases on federal land. Thanks to over a decade of funding from the Walker Foundation,we have retired over 75 grazing allotments totaling over 1.6 million acres. In 2017 NWF launched the WCR Southern Rockies, Colorado Plateau and Great Basin program and in the coming year we will pilot a new strategy in Grand Staircase-Escalante National and Bears Ears National Monuments in southern Utah that we will include "AUM buy-downs," but will also include the full retirement of grazing allotments.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
• Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

New Tool, New Solutions for Decarbonizing Calif & Georgia Grids
This project will use a unique new computer-based tool to investigate how two states, California and Georgia, can successfully decarbonize their electric grids by introducing nuclear power, a reliable, emission-free energy source. The electric grids in these states will need dispatchable emission-free resources to assure a reliable future grid. This project will describe the size, output requirements, and cost of these resources in these two contrasting case studies.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

Atmospheric Trust Campaign
We support legal actions and public education to secure the legal right to a healthy atmosphere and stable climate system at the federal, state and global domestic levels. See supplemental section for a description of specific actions.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

Building Engaged, Informed, and Connected Grasstops for 2023 and Beyond
With this project, the Pricing Carbon Initiative (PCI) will continue with the mission launched in 2011 to build support for bipartisan carbon pricing solutions, designed to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by fostering understanding and cooperation between a wide range of organizations and opinion leaders. (www.pricingcarbon.org) This request was amended on 4/24/23 to include added funding for a 2-day retreat this May on current opportunities to promote Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms (CBAMs).

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
• Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

Pricing Carbon Initiative Dialogues, Public Forums, CBAM Project, and Capacity Building in 2014
In 2024, the Pricing Carbon Initiative (PCI) will continue with its mission, launched in 2011, to build support for bipartisan carbon pricing solutions, designed to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions, by fostering understanding and cooperation between a wide range of organizations and opinion leaders. Specifically, the Walker Foundation funding this year will assist PCI with projects informed by the day-long Pricing Carbon Dialogue on January 23, at Brookings Institution. That work will involve virtual Dialogues, public forums, the “Convening the Conveners” project (seeking viable CBAM opportunities) and overall PCI capacity building.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Investigates the effect of the global financial system and/or the monetary system in fostering a sustainable economy.
• Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.

Ocean System Damages and the Social Cost of Carbon
The ocean provides critical services that are essential to human well-being, including food, biodiversity, recreation, and tourism. Climate change, however, poses myriad threats to oceans. Ocean acidification and warming (OAW), which are driven by oceans absorbing emitted carbon dioxide (CO2) and climate change, are having significant detrimental impacts on the services that oceans provide. While these impacts have substantial economic value, OAW has yet to be incorporated into estimates of the social cost of carbon (SCC). The SCC is a metric representing the damages, in dollars, from an incremental ton of CO2 released into the atmosphere. The SCC is used by federal policymakers and others as a measure of the benefits of mitigating carbon emissions. However, climate change’s impacts on ocean systems are not accounted for in existing SCC estimates. To address this gap, RFF convened an interdisciplinary group of experts to study how researchers could incorporate OAW damages into the SCC.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Explores and develops market-based solutions.