EconClimate Lab

Whether and how the United States embraces a clean energy transition will define its economic trajectory for decades to come. Yet policymakers are ill-equipped to meet that moment. The economic tools and frameworks they rely on were not designed for the scale, complexity, and urgency of a clean energy transition. 

This work has never been more urgent—or more actionable. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act created a real-world laboratory for economic policy at scale—and their implementation, reversals, and shifts under the current Administration have generated a new set of questions that existing frameworks weren’t built to answer. Across the economics profession, scholars are beginning to ask those questions. The emergence of modern American industrial strategy has reframed the clean energy transition as a core national competitiveness priority—creating new demand for exactly the kind of rigorous, implementation-focused economic thinking the Lab is positioned to provide.

‘We’re All Climate Economists Now’

With climate change affecting everything from household finances to electric grids, the profession is increasingly focused on how society can mitigate carbon emissions and cope with their impact,

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