Union of Concerned Scientists

The Kendall Science Fellows Program was established in 2010 to foster innovative and exploratory analysis on emerging, policy-relevant technical issues and to enhance science dialogue among NGOs by engaging a diverse group of both early-career and senior scientists from academia and other sectors. This grant is to the Union of Concerned Scientists to develop two sets of policies with regards to the California Renewable Energy Standard. First, what are the policies that will be necessary to ensure the California meets it Renewable energy goals in a low cost manner. Second, while Renewable Energy Standards have been remarkably effective in promoting renewable energy, there need to be a new set of policy frameworks that go beyond the RES. This grant seeks to develop that framework. Specifically, the grant will fund a fellowship at UCS to answer these questions.

A grant to the Union of Concerned Scientists would allow the organization to make use of the special circumstances brought on by the President’s decision to cut $480 billion from the defense budget over the next ten years. The project would bring together scientists from the National Laboratories with experts from the nuclear policy community to determine where to make cuts while maintaining the safety of the U.S. nuclear stockpile. The Union of Concerned Scientists’ staff of technical experts makes them well suited to find common ground between scientists at the National Labs and the policy community, who have traditionally been at odds.

This grant, also aimed at furthering our grantees’ efforts to retire U.S. coal plants, would include two categories of activities. First, it would shift energy dispatch rules in the coal rich Midwest and with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that will accelerate coal retirements and the deployment of clean energy alternatives. Second, the Union of Concerned Scientists would write a follow- up report and associated communication products that would build on its "Burning Coal, Burning Cash" report, with the goal of driving an economic wedge between coal producing and coal consuming states.