Niskanen Center: Grantee Spotlight

Grantee spotlight: Niskanen Center

The Giving Green Fund plans to award a grant to the Niskanen Center for its research and education on transmission policies. The Center is a U.S.-based think tank that promotes market-oriented policies.

The Center’s work falls within our philanthropic strategy of unleashing clean energy in the U.S. Please see Giving Green’s strategy report for more information, including recommended sub-strategies, theory of change, and key uncertainties.

Last updated: October 2025

What is the Niskanen Center?

Founded in 2015, the Niskanen Center is an ideologically diverse U.S.-based think tank guided by the belief that a free market and an effective government are mutually dependent. It works on policy research and education across several issue areas, including climate change and energy bottlenecks.

What are we funding, and how could it help address climate change?

We are funding the Center’s work to advance transmission policies that increase interregional capacity. Building on its recent paper on high-voltage direct current (HVDC), the Center will educate policymakers on solutions that promote competition and technology adoption. While focused on federal policy—particularly targeted at moderate Republicans—it will also engage at the state level, particularly those states where interregional issues are most acute. By framing transmission around innovation, affordability, and national security, we think the Center could help broaden support and make transmission improvements less politically divisive.

In our strategy report on unleashing clean energy in the U.S., we identified addressing transmission challenges as a promising approach to decarbonizing the U.S. grid. Specifically, improving transmission can speed up deployment and de-risk critical clean energy projects by reducing costs and making project timelines more predictable. We believe that the Center’s proposed work is well-aligned with our strategy. In general, we think the Center’s work could help address climate change by getting clean energy technologies onto the grid faster, which can help prevent the buildout of new fossil fuel technologies. 

Why do we think the Niskanen Center will use this funding well?

The Niskanen Center has a strong track record of providing trusted policy analysis. The Climate and Energy team works directly with congressional offices to develop pragmatic, market-aligned solutions to bridge partisan divides and accelerate the modernization of U.S. infrastructure. Niskanen has made major legislative contributions to climate-related legislative proposals such as the MARKET CHOICE Act, a bipartisan proposal to replace the federal gas and diesel tax with a carbon tax on greenhouse gas emissions, and the Streamlining Interstate Transmission of Electricity (SITE) Act, which proposes a federal siting authority for high capacity inter-state transmission lines. For example, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission invited Niskanen to present its analysis of interregional transmission capacity at a staff workshop. Niskanen’s expertise in this area also informed the Building Integrated Grids with Inter-Regional Energy Supply (BIG WIRES) Act, which contains provisions to improve planning and construction of interregional electrical transmission lines. On the permitting front, Niskanen’s 2024 analysis of NEPA timelines for transmission projects has already been cited in the Congressional record by Republican lawmakers and witnesses three times.

Our understanding is that it has strong working relationships with both Democrats and Republicans. For example, in 2023, the Climate and Energy team had 121 meetings with congressional offices across party lines, and multiple Democratic and Republican offices have sought out its policy advice and legislative text reviews. With its right-leaning background, we think it is one of the few climate-oriented think tanks that can influence Republicans.

This track record of bipartisan engagement, policy impact, and credibility makes us confident that the Center will use this funding effectively to drive real progress on clean energy and climate goals.

Giving Green believes that additional climate donations are likely to be most impactful when directed to our top nonprofits. For several reasons, we may choose to recommend grants to other organizations for work that we believe is at least as impactful as grants to our top recommendations. We are highlighting this grant to offer transparency to donors to the Giving Green Fund, as well as to provide a resource for donors who are particularly interested in this impact strategy. This is a nonpartisan analysis (study or research) and is provided for educational purposes.

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