New Approaches
on Energy and the Environment
Policy Advice for the President
Richard D. Morgenstern and Paul R. Portney, editors

Book Overview
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Written by economists and policy analysts at Resources for the Future, a Washington, DC, think tank with a tradition for independent, objective research, this collection of twenty-five "memos to the President" offers constructive policy options for the elected administration on critical challenges related to energy, the environment, and natural resources.

Each contributor to New Approaches on Energy and the Environment was asked to address the question: "Based on your research and knowledge, what policy recommendation would you like to make to the next U.S. president?" Writing in advance of the 2004 election so as to keep their essays free of partisan interpretations, the authors were asked not to confine their suggestions to what the prevailing wisdom says is politically possible. They also took pains to make their ideas accessible to a busy president as well as a wide range of readers interested in a concise and authoritative overview of the nation?s energy and environmental policy choices. The results are provocative, sometimes controversial, but highly readable essays on topics including climate change, oil dependency, electricity regulation, brownfields revitalization, forest service administration, air and water quality, and environmental health issues such as food safety and the growing threat of antibiotic resistance.

When the President takes office in January, 2005, he will confront competing perspectives about the priorities and approaches that should apply to energy and environmental policy: Americans want cleaner air and water and healthy and attractive surroundings, but they also want inexpensive fuel, comfortable cars and houses, and continued economic growth. New Approaches on Energy and the Environment provides thought-provoking, commonsense contributions to debates about important energy and environmental issues confronting the U.S. today.

Book Reviews
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"At a time when America desperately needs to overcome its addiction to oil, Resources for the Future has prepared a valuable compendium of policy alternatives. New Approaches on Energy and the Environment presents an exciting array of options in the clear, concise manner White House decision makers need to make choices that will move the United States towards an energy secure future."

- John D. Podesta, president and chief executive officer of the Center for American Progress, and former chief of staff to President William J. Clinton

"A healthy democracy depends on periodic infusions of fresh, innovative proposals into the marketplace of ideas. There they will be discussed, debated, examined, and ultimately embraced, amended, or discarded. These wide-ranging memos from serious scholars represent useful, much-needed, and timely contributions to this marketplace."

- Roger B. Porter, IBM Professor of Business and Government, Harvard University, and former assistant to President George H. W. Bush for economic and domestic policy

Author Biographies
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H. Spencer Banzhaf explores nonmarket valuation of air quality and other public goods and has proposed an approach to incorporating public goods into cost-ofliving indexes, such as the U.S. consumer price index. He also studies the history of economic ideas and institutions, such as inflation and the agencies measuring it.
Chapter 23. Create a Bureau of Environmental Statistics

Thomas C. Beierle, a former RFF fellow, has looked closely at stakeholder involvement in environmental decisionmaking and has extensively studied the impact of public participation in environmental policy formulation. He currently is an associate with Ross and Associates Environmental Consulting in Seattle.
Chapter 24. Treading Carefully with Environmental Information

James Boyd centers his research on law and regulatory economics, including liability law, water quality regulation, ecological benefit assessment, environmental enforcement, and land use management.
Chapter 22. Combatting Ignorance About U.S. Water Quality

Timothy J. Brennan, professor of public policy and economics at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, is a coauthor of Alternating Currents: Electricity Markets and Public Policy and a former senior industrial organization and regulation economist for the Council of Economic Advisers.
Chapter 7. Making Electricity Markets Competitive: How Fast and by Whom?

Dallas Burtraw has concentrated his research interests on the restructuring of the electric utility market, the design of environmental regulation, and the costs and benefits to society of such regulation. His recent work focuses on multipollutant policy choices, greenhouse gas emissions, tradable emission permits, and valuation of natural resource improvements.
Chapter 3. A Carbon Tax to Reduce the Deficit
Chapter 8. Cleaning Up Power Plant Emissions

Maureen L. Cropper is a lead economist in the Research Department of the World Bank and a professor of economics at the University of Maryland. She is a member of the RFF Board of Directors and former president of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
Chapter 25. Better Evaluation of Life-Saving Environmental Regulations

Joel Darmstadter studies energy resources and policy, particularly in their relation to economic development. His professional activities have included congressional testimony and participation in National Academy of Sciences studies.
Chapter 4. Slaking Our Thirst for Oil
Chapter 5. Stimulating Renewable Energy: A "Green Power" Initiative

Carolyn Fischer concentrates her research on the design of market-based environmental policies, including the costs and benefits of different options for allocating tradable emissions permits. She has explored policies to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, improve fuel economy, promote technological advances, and better manage natural resources.
Chapter 6. Rewarding Automakers for Fuel Economy Improvements

Robert W. Fri has served as director of the National Museum of Natural History, president of Resources for the Future, and deputy administrator of both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Research and Development Administration.
Chapter 1. Taking the Lead on Climate Change

Winston Harrington pursues research interests that encompass urban transportation, motor vehicles and air quality, and problems of estimating the costs of environmental policy. He has written or coauthored five books, including Choosing Environmental Policy: Comparing Instruments and Outcomes in the United States and Europe.
Chapter 9. Pay-As-You-Drive for Car Insurance
Chapter 10. State Innovation for Environmental Improvements: Experimental Federalism

Sandra A. Hoffman examines the use of regulation and tort law in managing health and environmental risks, currently focusing on food safety, valuation of children's benefits from environmental protection, and tort compensation for nonmonetary loss. She is a coeditor of Toward Safer Food: Perspectives on Risk and Priority Setting.
Chapter 17. Performance Standards for Food Safety

Raymond J. Kopp led the first examination of the cost of major U.S. environmental regulations, using an approach that is now widely accepted as state-of-the-art in cost-benefit analysis. He is the coauthor of Valuing Natural Assets: The Economics of Natural Resource Damage Assessment and is a member of the U.S. Department of State?s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy.
Chapter 2. Stimulating Technology to Slow Climate Change

Alan J. Krupnick analyzes the benefits, costs, and design of air pollution policies and also focuses on valuation of health and ecological improvements. He is former senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers. He is the author of Valuing Health Outcomes: Policy Choices and Technical Issues.
Chapter 12. Focus on Particulates More Than Smog
Chapter 13. A New Approach to Air Quality Management 
Chapter 17. Performance Standards for Food Safety

Ramanan Laxminarayan's work on "resistance economics" uses economic analysis to develop policy responses to such problems as bacterial resistance to antibiotics and pest resistance to pesticides. He has served on expert panels on these issues at the World Health Organization and the Institute of Medicine and is editor of Battling Resistance to Antibiotics and Pesticides: An Economic Approach.
Chapter 20. Getting Serious About Antibiotic Resistance

Molly K. Macauley devotes her research interests to space policy and the economics of new technologies. She serves on several National Research Council committees addressing space policy and has testified numerous times before Congress on her work.
Chapter 19. Smarter Budgeting for Space Missions

Richard D. Morgenstern focuses on the costs, benefits, and design of environmental policies. His research interests include conventional types of pollution as well as global climate change. He has served in senior policy posts in both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of State.
Introduction
Chapter 2. Stimulating Technology to Slow Climate Change

Richard G. Newell concentrates his research and outreach efforts on economic analysis of incentive-based policy and the role of technological change in environmental and natural resource policy. His research applications encompass climate change, energy efficiency, energy technologies, valuation of costs and benefits over time, and fisheries policy.
Chapter 2. Stimulating Technology to Slow Climate Change

Karen L. Palmer  explores the environmental and economic consequences of electricity restructuring and studies environmental policies focused on electricity generators. She also researches the economics of recycling and product stewardship. A former visiting economist at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, she is coauthor of Alternating Currents: Electricity Markets and Public Policy.
Chapter 8. Cleaning Up Power Plant Emissions
Chapter 10. State Innovation for Environmental Improvements: Experimental Federalism

Ian Parry specializes in environmental, transportation, energy, and tax policies. His recent work has analyzed gasoline taxes, fuel economy standards, mass transit subsidies, alcohol taxes, policies to reduce traffic congestion and accidents, environmental tax shifts, the role of technology policy in environmental protection, and the distributional impacts of pollution control.
Chapter 4. Slaking Our Thirst for Oil
Chapter 9. Pay-As-You-Drive for Car Insurance
Chapter 11. Pay as You Slow: Road Pricing to Reduce Traffic Congestion

William A. Pizer centers his work on econometrics and public finance. He applies much of this work to the question of how to design and implement policies to reduce the threat of human-induced climate change. He is a senior economist at the National Commission on Energy Policy and served as senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisers.
Chapter 2. Stimulating Technology to Slow Climate Change

Paul R. Portney is president of Resources for the Future and is the author or coauthor of ten books, including Public Policies for Environmental Protection. He is former chief economist at the Council on Environmental Quality.
Introduction
Chapter 3. A Carbon Tax to Reduce the Deficit
Chapter 6. Rewarding Automakers for Fuel Economy Improvements

Katherine N. Probst focuses her research on the costs and implementation of the Superfund program. She has also examined the management of long-term risks at sites in the nuclear weapons complex. She is lead author of Superfund's Future: What Will It Cost?
Chapter 14. Redirecting Superfund Dollars

Elena Safirova uses economic modeling to examine urban issues, including the impact of land use and transportation interaction on policy effectiveness. She has also studied the effect of telecommuting on urban spatial structure and conducted cost-benefit and distributional analysis of road pricing.
Chapter 11. Pay as You Slow: Road Pricing to Reduce Traffic Congestion

James N. Sanchirico conducts economic analysis of fishery policy design, specifically the effects of transferable fishing quotas and marine protected areas. This research is based on ecological-economic models and has received numerous awards. He also works on the dynamics between land use and water quality and biodiversity conservation.
Chapter 21. Zoning the Oceans: Changing the Focus of U.S. Fisheries Management

Roger A. Sedjo directs forest economics policy research, including global environmental problems, climate change and biodiversity, public lands, international forest sustainability, timber supply and trade, forest biotechnology, and land use change. He has written or edited 14 books related to forestry and natural resources.
Chapter 18. Streamlining Forest Service Planning

Leonard Shabman centers his research on studying market incentives in environmental management, including water supply and quality, flood hazard management, river restoration, fishery management, and public investment analysis. He is former director of the Virginia Water Resources Research Center, and a professor of agricultural and applied economics at Virginia Polytechnic University.
Chapter 22. Combatting Ignorance About U.S. Water Quality

Jhih-Shyang Shih engages in quantitative analysis of environmental management and resource policy. He models air quality, risk, surface water, and solid waste management, and studies costs of environmental protection, technology adoption, and renewable energy.
Chapter 13. A New Approach to Air Quality Management 

Michael R. Taylor analyzes and seeks ways to improve U.S. policies and programs that affect agriculture and food security in Africa, and he works with a consortium of universities to develop analytical and decision tools for risk-based food safety priority setting. Taylor, an attorney, was administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service and deputy commissioner for policy at the Food and Drug Administration.
Chapter 16. Modernizing the Food Safety System

Margaret Walls researches solid waste and recycling, urban land use issues, and transportation. Her work on waste and recycling includes analysis of "product stewardship" programs and the cost-effectiveness of alternative policies. In the land use area, she is currently analyzing transferable development rights programs for preserving open space.
Chapter 10. State Innovation for Environmental Improvements: Experimental Federalism

Kris Wernstedt explores policy responses to contaminated brownfields properties in the United States, including innovations in site reuse and voluntary cleanup efforts. His most recent work examines the use of environmental insurance at contaminated properties and the relative attractiveness of different incentives to encourage their redevelopment.
Chapter 15. A Broader View of Brownfield Revitalization