Addressing Climate Change through Public Policy and Markets
Climate change is one of the most important challenges mankind is facing and it is therefore important to find ways to address it through regulation and harnessing the power of markets. Together the two projects we propose, will focus on this challenge by seeking to understand the underexplored issues related to the climate crisis and by exploring potential avenues for policy change.

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

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.

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.

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 – a multi-state strategy
With generous support from the Alex C. Walker Foundation in 2022, CSE and its partners made major advances towards full implementation of the fossil fuel risk bond concept in Oregon and Washington, including statewide legislation in both states and a comprehensive ordinance in King County. Details are provided below.

• 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 funding from Walker Foundation, CSE is advocating for inclusion of 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 140008, Executive Order 14072, and the US pledge to end deforestation and forest degradation by 2030. At the state level, we are focussing efforts on executive actions by governors in North Carolina, Maine, Oregon and Washington. 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, redirection of harmful subsidies, and ecosystem service markets as an alternative to timber to finance public schools and services.

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

Compelling GHG Pollution Phase Out Under Existing US Law
Administrative & public advocacy, research, and legal action as warranted, to secure a strong federal rule pursuant to the Toxic Substance Control Act (TSCA) aimed at phasing out GHG pollution and compelling major sources to remove or pay to remove excess atmospheric CO2, initially incentivized by a rising carbon fee.

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

State Policy Analysis Database for Electricity
This application is to acquire funding to expand the State Climate Policy Dashboard, a 50-state interactive database of climate policy managed by Climate XChange. Specifically, this request is for funding to expand the electricity policy data to a new scorecard for all 50 states.

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

Support for Climate XChange & The State Climate Policy Dashboard
This application is to support Climate XChange's efforts to put forth market-driven solutions to climate change. Climate XChange achieves these impacts primarily through the State Climate Policy Network (SCPN) and State Climate Policy Dashboard (Dashboard). The SCPN is a platform of 16,500 state climate leaders that have access to programming, research, and direct support from Climate XChange to advance state climate policy. The Dashboard is a public database of 65+ climate policies across all 50 states that helps state actors and researchers better navigate technical policy information. Funding will provide added resources to the direct technical support, research and data analysis, and advocacy efforts that enable our network of state climate leaders to push forward sensible and just policy solutions to climate change.

• Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.
• 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, 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. If utilities in Cook Inlet are out of gas, they will be forced to import liquified natural gas (LNG) for electricity generation and home heating fuel. As a result, prices will escalate making Alaska less attractive to live and invest in. Meanwhile, Donlin Gold is banking on getting its power from Cook Inlet. Inletkeeper is working 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.

Equity Impacts of Clean Energy Policy Design
Good Energy Collective (GEC) will analyze the effects of clean energy policies on energy prices to further understand the impact on inequality and the short-term feasibility of decarbonization policies in a period of growing inflationary concerns. In tandem, GEC will analyze the effects on marginalized communities of insufficient baseload energy resources and how different energy policies may be eroding reliability.

• Investigates the causes of economic imbalances.
• Investigates causes tending to destroy or impair the free-market system.

Maximizing ecosystem services and biodiversity protection for future land acquisitions of the Children’s Eternal Rainforest (Bosque Eterno de los Niños, “BEN”)
In November 2022, the Monteverde Conservation League received a grant from the Alex C. Walker Foundation for the amount of $20,000. The primary goal for this project was to use GIS techniques to map areas adjacent to the Children’s Eternal Rainforest (Bosque Eterno de los Niños, “BEN”) in order to identify the best places to concentrate land purchases in the future. With GIS technology, we can identify areas that have highest ecosystem services values, biodiversity, and that would increase connectivity to other conservation areas of Costa Rica. These results would allow us to utilize our limited resources to maximize conservation success for the future.

• 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.

Wildlife Conflict Resolution and Western Waters Program 2022/2023
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 Monument in southern Utah that we are describing as "AUM buy-downs." We are also launching the Western Waters Program that will largely focus on restoration of Colorado River Basin watersheds using beaver analog structures also known as Low Tech Process Restoration. This work will seek to institutionalize LTPBR in the Bureau of Land Management and to prioritize the retirement of grazing allotments that significantly impact downstream water quantity and quality.

• 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.

Defending against eminent domain abuse by fossil fuel industries
The explosion in U.S. shale gas and shale oil has caused an unprecedented building spree of oil and gas pipelines. Our concern is that massive investment in pipeline infrastructure may become the largest impediment to transitioning to renewable power. One of the ways to prevent this is by curtailing the ability of pipeline companies to use eminent domain to take property. Because Niskanen has a strong commitment to free market principles and the protection of property rights, it is perfectly situated to lead such legal efforts, and we believe it is extremely important for courts to hear from a pro-market, right-of-center organization that focuses on property rights issues around pipelines, and not exclusively on their environmental impacts.

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

Atmospheric Trust Campaign
Our Children’s Trust is the only 501(c)(3) non-profit public interest law firm in the world providing science-based legal services exclusively to children to secure their legal rights to a safe climate. Our legal work – grounded in constitutional, public trust, and human rights laws, as well as in the laws of nature – aims to stop government actions that contribute to the worsening of the climate crisis, as these actions also violate innumerable rights that depend fundamentally on a habitable planet (rights to life, liberty, property, personal security, religious freedom, etc.). We work to protect Earth’s climate for present and future generations by representing and supporting young people in global legal efforts to secure legally binding judicial declarations that will return atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations to below 350 parts per million (ppm) by the year 2100: the scientific prescription for a safe climate.

• 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 Grasstops Support in 2022/2023 for Carbon Pricing
In 2022-23, the Pricing Carbon Initiative (PCI) will continue with its efforts, launched in 2011, to build support, by fostering understanding and cooperation between a wide range of organizations and opinion leaders, for bipartisan carbon pricing solutions designed to drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. During the ongoing pandemic, PCI is conducting the ongoing Pricing Carbon Dialogues in a virtual mode. Given how well this is working, the virtual meetings will likely continue even after our in-person meetings resume. PCI will also continue to organize related efforts designed to engage and encourage additional support, cooperation and participation. [This application, submitted earlier this year, is being resubmitted with updates for the October 1, 2022 grant cycle.

• 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.

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.

Ocean System Damages and the Social Cost of Carbon
Climate change poses myriad threats to oceans. The ocean provides critical services that are essential to human well-being, including food, biodiversity, non-use value, recreation, and tourism. However, ocean acidification and warming (OAW), which are driven by the oceans absorbing emitted carbon dioxide (CO2) and climate change, are having significant detrimental impacts on these systems. While these impacts have substantial economic value, OAW has yet to be incorporated into estimate of the social cost of carbon (SCC). The SCC is a metric intended to reflect the damages, in dollars, stemming 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. To address this important gap for policymaking, RFF proposes to convene an interdisciplinary group of experts in a series of virtual workshops to study how researchers might go about incorporating OAW damages into the SCC.

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