This grant to Richard Newell at the Duke University Energy Initiative supports the second phase of research focused on documenting and understanding local economic responses to managing shale gas and oil revenues.  Newell’s previous research analyzed the extent to which increased tax receipts are able to cover growing expenditures for municipal services in several municipalities and counties across eight states. This grant will allow Newell to expand his efforts in the states already surveyed and to expand his research to eight additional states, covering every major shale energy producing region in the country. Newell and his team will conduct over 75 on-the-ground structured interviews with local municipal managers, industry stakeholders, and other experts in these states.  They will also collect financial data from local governments and produce a robust economic analysis comparing tax collection and revenue distribution practices.  The expansion of state coverage will also allow the research team to write a set of synthesis reports that compare experiences across the United States.  Finally, Newell and his team also propose to disseminate their research findings broadly in academic and policy settings.

The foundational treaty of the global nuclear order, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), does not define what constitutes a nuclear weapon and therefore what activities, technologies, and materials should be regarded as evidence that a state is seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. This lack of definition exacerbates the nonproliferation challenge of distinguishing between legitimate nuclear activities (be they peaceful or military applications such as naval propulsion) and illegitimate ones (namely, those oriented toward nuclear weapons). This challenge, in turn, exacerbates the difficulty of promoting the peaceful spread of nuclear energy while preventing weapons proliferation. This grant provides continued support to an initiative by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to build an international, science-based, de-politicized consensus around how to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate nuclear activity as defined by the NPT. Funds will support preparation for an international meeting of stakeholders in Beijing in 2014, finalization of technical documentation, the identification of use-cases and potential applications of the new identification regime, and outreach and communication efforts aimed at garnering broad international support.