New Rules Project - Designing Rules As If Community Matters

Concentrating Solar and Decentralized Power: Government Incentives Hinder Local Ownership Can residential rooftop solar compete with new utility-scale concentrating solar electric plants? Only if federal and state incentives are amended to level the playing field. This May 2008 report explores the economics of solar PV and concentrating solar and shows how local ownership is hindered unless government solar incentives change. Download the full report
Broadening Wind Energy Ownership by Changing Federal Incentives This April 2008 policy brief shows how current federal law discriminates against people owning their own power plants and highlights how the removal of two barriers at the federal level could dramatically enhance local ownership and investment in renewable energy projects. View Press Release and Download the full report
Driving Our Way to Energy Independence Updating our pathbreaking 2003 report, this April 2008 report describes how commercially available technologies today could transform our petroleum powered transportation system into one powered by electricity and biofuels. Provisions in the recently passed Energy Act could accelerate that transformation. With the adoption of complementary policies, the revolution in our transportation sector can generate an equally profound revolution in our electricity sector. Hundreds of thousands of locally owned wind turbines and solar electric arrays supplying flexible fueled, plug-in hybrid vehicles can allow tens of millions of Americans to become energy producers not just energy consumers. Executive Summary and Download the full report
Ethanol and Land Use Changes This February 2008 policy brief criticizes the authors of two recent studies published in Science for advancing a conclusion not supported by their own studies. The paper notes that the vast majority of today’s ethanol production comes from corn cultivated on land that has been in corn production for generations. Since little new land has come into production, either directly or indirectly, the current use of ethanol clearly reduces greenhouse gas emissions. View Press Release and Download the full report
Carbon Caps With Universal Dividends: Equitable, Ethical & Politically Effective Climate Policy This January 2008 policy brief concludes that universal dividends are a critically important tool to create the political will and public acceptance for a carbon cap. Universal dividends have the potential to hold harmless a large segment of consumers while we move to a low-carbon economy. Moreover, the universal dividend honors the principle that the sky belongs to all of us equally. Private investment in clean and efficient technologies will be driven by a carbon cap that leads to steady reductions over time of GHG emissions and carbon-based fuels. View Executive Summary and Download the full report
Municipal Broadband: Demystifying Wireless and Fiber-Optic Options This January 2008 policy brief examines how the United States, creator of the Internet, increasingly lags in high-speed access to it. In the absence of a national broadband strategy, hundreds of communities have invested in broadband infrastructure to solve their problem locally. This report highlights how communities are continuing to invest in broadband networks - both wired and wireless - and digs deeper into these technologies and the tradeoffs of each. The solution: wireless solves the mobility problem; fiber solves the speed and capacity problems; and public ownership offers a network built to benefit the community. View Executive Summary and Download the full report
Minnesota Feed-In Tariff Could Lower Cost, Boost Renewables and Expand Local Ownership This January 2008 policy brief highlights how several European countries, and more recently the Canadian province of Ontario, have adopted a simple yet powerful strategy to expand renewable energy and benefit local economies. It is called a feed-in tariff: a mandated, long-term premium price for renewable energy paid by the local electric utility to energy producers. Evidence shows that a feed-in tariff achieves greater results at a lower cost than do other strategies like tax incentives or renewable electricity standards. View Executive Summary and Download Full Report
New Rules Project - 2007 Annual Report Learn about our accomplishments in three sectors of targeted focus: Hometown Advantage - expanding, developing and protecting locally owned retail businesses Democratic Energy - dispersed energy generation and local ownership Telecommunications As Commons - building strong, publicly owned telecommunications networks
The Policy Gap: Minnesota Energy Policy vs. Minnesota Climate Policy This November 2007 policy brief examines the impact that Minnesota's energy policies will have on Minnesota's greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction goals. Even if fully achieved, the state's energy policies would simply slow the rate at which GHG emissions continue to grow. View Executive Summary and Download Full Report
Burlington Telecom Case Study This August 2007 case study by Christopher Mitchell examines how one community in Vermont solved its broadband problems and created a new revenue source by building a city wide fiber optic network. [see also the summary and recent Future Tense (NPR) podcast]
Wind and Ethanol: Economies and Diseconomies of Scale This August 2007 report finds that there are indeed small cost reductions from very large scale, absentee owned renewable energy facilities. But that these are overshadowed by the significant loss in potential economic benefits from locally owned and more modestly scaled facilities. download the report - read the press release
PUBLIC POLICY VICTORY! Maine Passes Law Requiring Economic Impact Studies of Big-Box Projects The Maine legislature has given its approval to a bill that ILSR worked on extensively that requires cities and towns to evaluate the economic effects of large-scale retail development and to approve only those projects that will not have an adverse impact on jobs, local businesses, and municipal finances. The legislation is the first of its kind in the nation. Read the Press Release

Big Box Swindle: The True Cost of Mega-Retailers and the Fight for America's Independent Businesses

In this deft and revealing book, Stacy Mitchell illustrates how mega-retailers are fueling many of our most pressing problems, from the shrinking middle class to rising pollution and diminished civic engagement. She then shows how communities and independent businesses are effectively fighting back. Buy Big Box Swindle Today! [Also available at your local independent book stores now, published by Beacon Press] Click for more details on the new book

The Hometown Advantage

We've already worked with more than 100 communities to develop policies to nurture their locally-owned businesses. We are the go-to source for cities that are fighting against absentee owned, big box retail, fielding scores of questions each week from communities around the nation. Our resources can help you make your hometown character shine.

Telecommunications As Commons Initiative

ILSR believes that only public ownership of a city's information infrastructure can guarantee citizens a controlling voice in the design and operation of those systems. Information networks can operate like road networks: a common carrier, open to all users and suppliers, small and large, at similar rates. We're working with key officials in a half dozen cities to foster publicly-owned information networks.

Biofuels and Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles

Since we first proposed this strategy in 2003, the concept of promoting plug-in, flexible fueled hybrid vehicles has gone mainstream. In 2006, we helped pass legislation in Minnesota declaring the intent of the state to pay a 10 percent premium for PHEVs and set up a task force to develop new policies to encourage the market transformation.

Climate Neutral Bonding: A Global Warming Solution

We're working with states and communities to enact a policy where no net increase in greenhouse gas emissions can occur as a result of publicly funded building projects. The policy saves taxpayer money, leads to highly efficient public buildings and takes a step in limiting global warming pollution. State enabling legislation passed the MN Senate in May 2006 and several cities are considering adopting the model resolution.

Why New Rules?

Because the old ones don't work any longer. They undermine local economies, subvert democracy, weaken our sense of community, and ignore the costs of our decisions on the next generation. More...

PUBLIC POLICY VICTORY!