The Policy Greenhouse

Why are they used? Fossil fuel subsidies are more or less used to buttress the natural gas and fossil fuel industry in the US. These subsidies are simply financial support (or financial incentive) that the US government offers energy companies. They can come in the form of direct payments to companies (in the form of… Read more

How does it work? A great tool that the EU has been making use of since 2005 is Carbon Pricing (which they have been doing through the European Union Emissions Trading System). Carbon Pricing forces large polluters (such as energy companies) to internalize the cost of their carbon emissions by putting forth a cap and… Read more

Overview The recent introduction of ESG scores have finally allowed us to quantify the environmental sustainabilities of different companies. ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) Scores appear in a few different ways. There are general ESG scores, which are overall ratings of companies and their sustainability (environmental), their employee and community relations (social), and their commitment… Read more

In recent years, one of the most environmentally impactful decisions that the US government has made was choosing to rejoin the Paris Agreement in 2021. The Paris Agreement is a legally binding agreement between 196 countries that is dedicated to limiting the global average temperature to only 2 degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels. Countries that… Read more

Sources: https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/biden-harris-administration-strengthens-proposal-cut-methane-pollution-protect, https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2022-11/8510_OilandGasClimate_OOOObRegText_Supplemental_20221005.pdf While climate reform can be slow work, new support for the Methane reforms (proposed in 2015, went into effect 2021) from the Biden administration shows that these proposed changes may just come into effect sooner than anticipated. The biggest concern when it comes to bills that are aimed at “reducing” some sort… Read more

The energy production industry is always evolving. In the Marcellus-Shale Region of Pennsylvania, new Hydro-Fracking Projects are helping to spur energy production in the US, but are also having negative effects on the Fracked areas. In this essay, I discussed the sustainability of these new Fracking projects by weighing their economic benefit against their environmental… Read more