Hi! My name is Nick Roy and I am a policy analyst focused on climate policy in the United States. My primary work focuses on power sector decarbonization. In the past, I researched in the areas of international trade and transportation. Currently, I am a Research Associate at Resources for the Future (RFF). Here, I have developed and utilized the Haiku Electricity Market Model to analyze climate policy. This website serves as a collection of my work thus far, and as a home for future additions. Below is a brief narrative of the topics I have studied with links to related products.

Federal Climate Policy

My work at RFF initiated during a period of major development in federal climate policy. In 2021-2022, I started working broadly on federal climate policy options under budget reconciliation by analyzing potential components of the Build Back Better package and as time progressed, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). I am the lead author of these two issue briefs, which were the most syndicated products from RFF in 2021 and 2022 respectively. After the passage of the IRA, I led an expanded modeling effort to examine the financial incidence and health implications of the new law. In 2023, we partnered with other lead decarbonization modelers to publish two multimodel analyses of the legislation examing economy wide and power sector specific impacts of the bill.

The work we did to rapidly analyze constantly evolving legislative proposals in congress birthed the Carbon Scoring Project at RFF. This project is establishing a rigorous and replicable modeling process to estimate the emissions and budgetary impacts of future climate policy proposals. The longer term goal of this project is to show how the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), or a similar nonpartisan institution, could rapidly analyze the impacts of proposed legislation for future efforts. This process could also be used to analyze the budgetary impacts of executive branch regulations such as power plant or vehicle efficiency rules under the Clean Air Act, which we are in the process of finalizing now. So far we have published an initial 2024 baseline examining the impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act and EPAs Good Neighbor rule. This work is a joy because it builds an institutional legacy from the work we conducted to inform decision makers on the economic and climate implications of their decisions.

State Climate Policy

When I first started as an analyst in 2020, comprehensive federal climate action was mostly off the table, and my team was mostly researching policies for states to decarbonize their economies. We focused primarily on carbon markets and their impact on the power sector but since the passage of the IRA, we have launched efforts to expand the policy set and sectoral scope of our work. Earlier in 2023, we published a report that considered the role of facility specific emissions caps in California’s cap-and-trade program. We wrote a magazine article on the matter and presented this work to the Environmental Justice Advisory Council for the cap-and-trade program in the fall of 2023. We learned a lot about the challenges and exciting ideas that arise from integrating environmental justice into the policy design of market-based mechanisms.

We then moved to look more broadly at the market design of the program, as CARB has indicated it might change some components in upcoming rulemaking. I expanded our power sector optimization model to include emissions abatement and electrification from other sectors in order to simulate different futures for the program. We submitted abbreviated comments on the matter in December 2023. This year, we published a report that evaluated many of CARB’s proposed amendments under the lens of uncertainty. We included additional market design mechanisms, an emissions containment reserve and facility specific emissions caps, that can improve emissisons reductions and distributional outcomes of the program. As CARB has advanced their rule-making with additional emissions budget modifications, we released an issue brief considering the budgetary implications from their proposal.

Undergraduate Work (Heavy Duty Trucking)

Prior to RFF I was a student at California State University of Long Beach. I graduated with a B.S. in Applied Mathematics, a B.A. in Mathematical Economic Theory, and a minor in Philosophy. The city of Long Beach’s economic heart is the Port of Long Beach making the city a rich research area for matters on heavy duty trucking. During my senior year, I researched port drayage disruptions at the Center for International Trade and Transportation (CITT). The summer before, I interned at RFF studying heavy duty trailer energy efficiency device adoption. To enhance my analytical capabilities I took graduate coursework in Regression Analysis, Calculus of Variations, Advanced Microeconomic Theory, Research Methods, and Econometrics. My work at CITT and RFF gave me useful background knowledge that I would later use to assist in the development of RFF’s MHDV decarbonization model.

Before developing my passion for research, I interned at Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses, where I fostered local economic development. I moved deeper into my studies and began to tutor mathematics and teach freshman organizational skills as a peer mentor and tutor. As President of the Economics Student Association, I found plenty of opportunities to mentor students and build community in our department. I am still involved with the organization today and annually host a workshop on environmental economics as well as restarting the alumni mentorship program. To me, one of the most rewarding aspects of research is the community that develops in academic and research institutions. At RFF, I continued this passion for community by helping organize the summer intern program at RFF for 2022 and 2023. I enjoy paying forward the valuable mentorship I receive and hope that remains a consistent thread in my career.