Did Carbon Actually Score A Quiet Win In Congress?
When Congress approved the Fiscal Year 2026 spending bills last month, many in the carbon sector braced for cuts but reality appears more optimistic.
Current Access Level “I” – ID Only: CUID holders, alumni, and approved guests only
The introduction of a flurry of bills calling for a carbon tax in the U.S. Congress is breathing some new life into a topic that has long been popular among economists but shunned by politicians.
In this edition of Columbia Energy Exchange, host Bill Loveless talks with Noah Kaufman, a Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy and economist specializing in carbon pricing, about this burst of activity on Capitol Hill and its implications for policymaking.
Before joining CGEP in 2018, Noah was a Deputy Associate Director of Energy and Climate Change at the White House Council on Environmental Quality during the Obama administration. He also worked at the World Resources Institute, where he led projects on carbon pricing, the economic impacts of climate policies and long-term decarbonization strategies.
Previously, he was a senior consultant in the environment practice at NERA Economic Consulting.
Noah and Bill discuss elements of the carbon-tax bills introduced by Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress and the circumstances under which they have cropped up now, as well as whether any of them stand a chance of much consideration as the U.S. approaches the 2020 presidential election year.
Noah also breaks down the thinking behind putting a price on carbon emissions, including the level to set it at and distribution of the revenue a carbon tax would raise.
How other climate policies – like incentives for renewable energy – match up with a federal carbon tax also comes up in the conversation, which Noah and Bill carried out by phone from their locations in New York and Washington, respectively.
A handy complement to this discussion is a new online resource from the Center on Global Energy Policy that illustrates what you need to know about a federal carbon tax in the United States.
As political support for clean energy has waxed and waned over the past twenty years, so has the government’s financial backing. In the 2010s, critics pointed to the...
With electricity prices on the rise, the future of our power grid is attracting a lot more attention. Surging demand is at the center of the story, but...
From the affordability crisis and the data center boom, to the US government’s campaign to reinvigorate the Venezuelan oil market, energy is dominating headlines in unusual ways. And...
Great power competition—particularly between the United States and China—is intensifying. This rivalry is reshaping everything from technology supply chains and energy security to the future of artificial intelligence. ...
The United States is at a rare inflection point for nuclear energy, with unprecedented momentum behind deployment and regulatory reform as nuclear becomes central to energy security, AI competitiveness, and state and corporate climate goals.
Multiple US–Iran conflict scenarios carry materially different risks for global oil infrastructure, transit routes, and prices.
China’s crude oil imports hit a record-high 11.6 million barrels per day in 2025, as geopolitical tensions, low oil prices, and global oversupply spurred China to increase its oil stockpiles, a trend likely to continue in 2026.