Research Library

Although Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador is confident that measures implemented in the first half of his tenure will help Mexico to achieve energy self-sufficiency, his optimism must be weighed against the evidence, writes nonresident scholar Adrian Duhalt. In this brief, Duhalt explains the flaws in López Obrador’s plan and why Mexico is unlikely to achieve energy self-sufficiency anytime soon.

Even before the high heat of summer, the Texas power grid is struggling — but the lessons for adapting future energy plans amid climate change apply globally, writes faculty scholar Daniel Cohan, and a better connected grid with cleaner energy is critical. Read his commentary in The Hill.

Entrepreneurs contribute to job growth, innovation and economic resiliency. In this brief, public finance fellow Joyce Beebe reviews five tax benefits commonly used, and sometimes overlooked, by entrepreneurs.

How can a U.S. response help Europe if Russian gas cuts off energy supplies of more countries following Poland and Bulgaria? The authors explain why currently, more drastic actions by the U.S. could prove counterproductive, unnecessary and harmful to U.S. trade policy. Read the post on the Baker Institute Blog.  This article originally appeared in the Forbes blog on May 2, 2022.

The war in Ukraine could severely disrupt exports of Russian gas to Europe. Energy fellows Steven Miles and Gabriel Collins explain how existing LNG floating storage vessels can provide a concrete, rapidly implementable gas supply solution until longer-term infrastructure investments are in place.

"With the pressures of climate change and the urgency to incorporate alternative energy resources like wind and solar, the fixation on the purported benefits of energy transition technologies overshadows the glaring reality — an absence of strategy around identifying and quantifying other life cycle externalities, such as waste disposal or environmental impacts," write fellow Rachel Meidl and research assistant Mathilde Saada. Read more on the Baker Institute Blog.

A lignite mine on the border of Poland and the Czech Republic is caught between global environmental and local economic concerns. For COP26 to make headway on climate action, the authors write, it must consider the local implications while proposing solutions.

This year's Nobel Prize in Physics broadens the traditionally defined scope of the discipline, writes Kenneth Evans, demonstrating how discoveries in physics play a crucial role in addressing global issues like climate change.

In the push for decarbonization, "turquoise" hydrogen offers a unique, commercially viable technology that reduces CO2 emissions, argue Rachel A. Meidl and Kenneth B. Medlock III.

With its significant reserves of critical metals and other geographic advantages, Chile is well positioned to help enable the energy transition. The authors discuss the country's leveraging of its copper and lithium resources and its growing trade with China.