The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) are among the largest investments ever made by the federal government to accelerate the decarbonization of the U.S. economy. These Acts provide multiple incentives to spur clean energy innovation—including tax credits, subsidies, and new grant funding—to a host of different actors within the economy, from companies and universities to states and local communities. There is considerable interest and value in understanding the impact of these interventions and incentives on reducing greenhouse gas emissions, on the creation of new clean energy technologies, on the generation of jobs within the clean energy economy, and on whether and to what extent funding benefits are flowing to disadvantaged. This grant provides funding for an ongoing project by Resources for the Future (RFF) to partner with federal agencies to evaluate the impact of energy policies and programs. Grant funds will support two prongs of work by RFF. The first is establishing a hub for energy policy evaluation research by holding an open Request for Proposals to broadly source and support research projects across the academic landscape. Resources will be provided to fund between 4-8 research projects at up to $100,000,000 each to begin evaluating different elements of the IRA's impact on the energy system. Grant support will cover expenses such as faculty research time, student stipends, data access, and travel to interact with federal agencies. RFF will convene funded research teams to share progress mid-way through the project and then at the end to share results with decision makers. The second prong will be developing an evaluation system to assess the impact of specific DOE funding programs. RFF will first conduct interviews to identify what can be learned about how program evaluation operates at other relevant agencies and inventory what evaluation efforts are currently taking place at DOE. Two candidate partners include the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.  This project is expected to result in a series of research papers, reports, policy briefs, and other publicly available outputs that will substantially advance the state of knowledge about contemporary clean energy policy and program evaluation.

Graphite is a key element used in clean energy technologies, such as lithium-ion batteries and solar panels, but as of now it is completely imported into the United States, predominantly from China. Though the United States has insufficient deposits of natural graphite to meet the growing demand for its use, synthetic graphite could serve as a more sustainable source of production. One challenge is that synthetic graphite production currently relies on fossil fuel-based feedstocks, but recent advancements in production using waste biomass or plastics waste have made "green" synthetic graphite a more appealing and plausible option for building domestic supply capacity. Leveraging a combination of multiple modeling strategies, this proposal aims to evaluate the environmental, economic, and equity implications of a developing green graphite supply chain in the US. The proposed work will compare two main potential feedstocks for synthetic graphite: biochar, a carbon-rich material typically derived from partially combusted biomass, like agricultural residues or industrial paper sludge, and plastics waste. The team will use information gleaned from literature review, geospatial analysis, and material flow analysis (MFA) to characterize the current domestic availability and flows of these source materials. They will then use life cycle assessment (LCA) and technoeconomic assessment (TEA) to evaluate the environmental and economic impacts of green graphite production processes that use these feedstocks. Finally, they will undertake regulatory analysis that will help provide policy recommendations for facilitating sustainable and equitable development of these supply chains. Sloan funds will primarily go towards faculty and student support, including support for one postdoctoral fellow and one graduate student researcher to contribute to the effort. The team will use additional funds from Yale University to hire additional graduate student researchers. Outputs are expected to include academic journal articles, conference presentations, and a project website to share key findings and resources. To broadly disseminate their findings, the team will also host a series of public webinars and a research symposium to help share results with a diverse range of stakeholders.