We partner with government agencies to identify and test promising regulatory approaches and scale proven solutions.

While the last several decades have been defined by innovation and rapid technological advancement in the broader economy, environmental regulators still rely primarily on enforcement tools and techniques developed in the 1970s. Reforms to environmental regulations and their enforcement could both improve environmental quality and reduce government expenditures.

The Energy & Environment Lab leverages state-of-the-art advances in data analysis, monitoring, and experimental methods to dramatically improve regulatory effectiveness and efficiency. A defining feature of the Lab’s approach is embedding researchers directly with regulators to establish and execute on research opportunities central to their priorities. This model uniquely positions the Lab not only to identify and test promising regulatory approaches with the most rigorous research methods available, but to drive proven approaches into action. The Lab’s work is fundamentally altering the form and conduct of environmental enforcement so that tactics are for the first time ever based on evidence, rather than rules of thumb or intuition.

Improving regulatory enforcement and compliance

Current inspection targeting and pollutant monitoring systems often rely on methods that are decades old and not data-driven. Leveraging technological advancements in computing capabilities, monitoring systems and analytic methods can transform the way agencies think about and implement environmental enforcement, compliance, and regulations to protect public health.

Harnessing big data to promote regulatory efficiency

Government agencies increasingly have at their disposal large databases with rich information—from historical data on facility compliance and emissions to high-frequency data on individual customer water usage. Yet, agencies rarely possess the expertise and capacity to fully utilize this data in their decision-making.

Testing regulations before scaling

Too often new regulations are put in place before their true impact is known, based on false assumptions or blind faith. Testing regulatory changes before adopting them as policy has tremendous potential to establish policies that can better enhance public wellbeing and address disparities while being credible and cost-effective.

Our model of providing quality research at no direct cost to our partners is made possible by generous support from foundations and individual donors. Our research priorities are driven by the challenges facing our partners, so we are grateful for all our donors who see value in supporting research. Our funders include:

• Arnold Ventures
• The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab
• The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
• The Booz Allen Foundation Innovation Fund
• Development Economics Research Fund at UChicago
• The International Growth Centre
• The Mark Martinez and Joey Irwin Memorial Public Projects Fund
• The National Philanthropic Trust
• Smith Richardson Foundation
• The Wellcome Trust
• The Weiss Fund for Development Economics
• The King Climate Action Initiative (K-CAI)