Summer 2021 Research Intern Applications Are Closed.
Do you want to begin a career in academic or policy research? Are you interested in contributing to impactful, balanced research that is aimed at improving environmental, energy and natural resource decisions? A summer research internship with Resources for the Future (RFF) might be right for you!
The RFF summer internship program provides an opportunity for students to prepare for careers that engage in academic and policy-relevant research. Interns are essential members of the Resources for the Future (RFF) Research and Policy Engagement team. They are responsible for providing technical support that, under the direction of RFF Fellows, allows for the production of compelling and impactful research that aligns with RFF’s mission of improving environmental, energy and natural resource decisions through impartial economic research and policy engagement.
Our research internships are a 10-week program paid at $15 an hour for up to 35 hours a week. Internships this year will be conducted virtually unless otherwise noted.
Applications for the summer 2021 hiring season have recently closed. We anticipate making hiring decisions by April 16th. Internships will run from June 7, 2021 to August 13, 2021. Start or end dates can be changed with an approved exception.
Projects that will be supported by a summer intern included
- Control of Industrial Greenhouse Gas Emissions. This project will assess alternative emission reduction strategies for different industrial sectors, with a focus on plant level analyses, gathering publicly available data on emissions, plant configurations, and control costs and analyzing the marginal abatement costs for different control options on a sector-specific basis.
- Energy Transition Policy. This project will evaluate current and proposed transition policies that include decarbonization programs in the U.S., Canada, and Europe, other policies that provide a foundation for transition initiatives (even if they are not explicitly linked to policy-induced energy transitions), and the public finance effects of an energy transition.
- Wildfire, Climate Adaptation, and Rural Communities. This project is focused on evaluating the extent to which wildfires are affecting rural economies across the West, gathering information on community adaptation programs to reduce wildfire impacts, and assessing the efficacy of those programs.
- Parks, Green Space, and Environmental Justice. This project will examine whether investment in parks and green space has helped or hurt EJ communities, with a focus on spending in the long-standing Land and Water Conservation Fund, and how policies and programs may be altered to achieve more equitable outcomes.
- Developing US & Canadian Electric Power Transmission Network Models. Working with RFF's E4ST power sector model, this project will simplify models of the eastern, western and Texas transmission grids, using the Ward reduction process.
- Use of Energy Savings Devices on Heavy Duty Truck Trailers. This project will analyze the in-use incidence of energy saving devices on trailers for heavy duty trucks using major arteries in the mid-Atlantic region.