Niskanen Center

This grant will support the Niskanen Center in its efforts to promote the ambitious use of industrial and energy-transmission policies to accelerate decarbonization and develop the economies of struggling regions in the U.S. The Niskanen Center is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank founded in 2015 by former libertarians who were interested in developing a center-right alternative to neoliberalism and promoting an open society to counter right-wing populism and its nationalist vision of the country’s future. Two separate Niskanen departments — Climate Policy and Poverty and Welfare Policy — will undertake the proposed work as a joint initiative. Specific research, communications, and policy development efforts will be designed to overcome the substantial coordination and information failures that prevent the economy from decarbonizing and reaching its full potential. Changes to the way the U.S. approaches economic development and energy transmission will be developed, with an emphasis on providing benefits to the country’s struggling regions. In this way, Niskanen aims to address regional inequalities, while building support and reducing political resistance to decarbonization. (Substrategy: U.S. National Policy).