RFF Summer Research Internship Program

Summer 2026 Research Internships – Apply Now!

Click on the individual links below to apply for an RFF internship. Or view all RFF openings here.

Do you want to begin a career in economics or policy research? Are you interested in contributing to impactful, balanced research that is aimed at improving environmental, energy and natural resource decisions? A summer research internship with Resources for the Future (RFF) might be right for you.

The RFF summer internship program provides an opportunity for students to prepare for careers that engage in rigorous, policy-relevant research. Interns are essential members of RFF’s Research and Policy Engagement team; they are responsible for providing technical support that, under the direction of RFF Fellows, allows for the production of compelling and impactful research that aligns with RFF’s mission of improving environmental, energy and natural resource decisions through impartial economic research and policy engagement.

At RFF, interns will have the opportunity to connect with researchers and other staff members through seminars, coffee chats, and RFF staff events. Further, the internship co-coordinators will organize an external intern event near the beginning of the summer to foster DC-wide connections with interns from other environmental organizations. The internship program will culminate with presentations from interns about their summer projects and an end-of-summer celebration.

The internship program will run June 15–August 21, 2026. Start or end dates for individual interns can be adjusted as needed. All internships will be conducted in RFF’s offices in Washington, DC.

RFF is also able to host a limited number of summer interns who are funded by their universities and study relevant topics like environmental economics or environmental policy research. Please feel free to contact [email protected] with any questions.

Summer 2026 internship projects include:

• Analyzing European Emissions Trading Data. Working with Milan Elkerbout (Fellow), the intern will prepare and analyze data from the European Union’s Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). The intern will create replicable code to merge annual EU ETS data with other data at the facility level and explore the data for interesting insights, learn more about related policies, and compare EU ETS insights with other emissions trading/cap-and-trade systems. The intern will contribute to an RFF blogpost or issue brief. Open to both undergraduate and graduate students.
• Power Sector Model Development. Working with Aaron Bergman (Fellow) and McKenna Peplinski (Senior Research Associate II), the intern will support the RFF modeling team that contributes to the Engineering, Economic, and Environmental Electricity Simulation Tool (E4ST), an open-platform power sector model that simulates impacts of environmental and energy policies on the electricity or power sector. The intern will help develop new capabilities, improve policy representations, and increase model flexibility and configurability. If time, the intern may also contribute to a policy analysis studying how demand growth from electrification trends and data centers could impact the power sector. Open to both undergraduate and graduate students.
• Analysis of Fossil Fuel Community Support Programs. Working with Daniel Raimi (Fellow), the intern will contribute to an ongoing project that seeks to provide a comprehensive understanding of government programs in the U.S. designed to support the economies of fossil fuel communities, a key part of facilitating an equitable transition towards a net-zero emissions economy. The intern will review, categorize, and analyze existing state and local government programs. Depending on the circumstances, the intern may be able to collaborate with the team beyond the paid internship on a public report. Open to both undergraduate and graduate students.
• Econometric Research on Household Energy Affordability. Working with Jesse Buchsbaum (Fellow) and Jenya Kahn-Lang (Fellow), the intern will have a chance to explore customer-level electricity utility data to analyze various aspects of household energy affordability. The intern will be able to help guide the direction of the work. The internship will contribute findings to an academic paper, and depending on circumstances, the intern may have the opportunity to continue collaborating with the Fellows on the paper beyond the paid internship.
• Medium- and Heavy-Duty Vehicle Model Development. Working with Nafisa Lohawala (Fellow) and Joshua Linn (Senior Fellow), the intern will support the development of a model of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles (MHDV). RFF’s Framework for Large-Scale Economic Evaluation of Trucking (FLEET) model aims to simulate scenarios given different transportation policies and market conditions. The intern will contribute findings to an academic paper, and depending on circumstances, may have the opportunity to continue collaborating with the Fellows on the paper beyond the paid internship.
• State-Level Critical Minerals Policies and Actions. Working with Beia Spiller (Fellow), the intern will study various policies and actions made by U.S. states regarding critical mineral supply chains and the role that states play in contributing to the domestic goal of industrial policy within the mineral space. Specifically, the team plans to learn about and document what U.S. states have done to incentivize the development of critical mineral supply chains- from extraction to battery and magnet manufacturing. Then the team plans to quantitatively analyze the effectiveness of the states’ actions. Depending on the intern’s experience and the project timeline, the intern would contribute to one or both tasks. By the end of the summer, the intern would collaborate with the team on an interactive map tool to view state policies and/or a written product.
• Evaluating Electricity Market Tools. Working with Karen Palmer (Senior Fellow), Jenya Kahn-Lang (Fellow), and Molly Robertson (Associate Fellow), the intern will help investigate and compare models and tools that assess capacity markets and resource adequacy. This will inform the intern and team to either create a new analytical tool or combine existing approaches to assess market design features. Depending on circumstances, the intern may be able to continue collaborating with the Fellows on a research paper beyond the paid internship.
• Air Conditioning & Exposure and Vulnerability to Extreme Heat. Working with Margaret Walls (Senior Fellow and Director, Climate Risks and Resilience Program), Kristen McCormack (Fellow), and Penny Liao (Fellow), the intern will help develop a database of extreme heat exposure and vulnerabilities, with a particular focus on air conditioning (AC) penetration and use. The intern may collect, process, and analyze large, administrative datasets and develop new methods, potentially drawing on machine learning and other big data techniques, to fill in data gaps. This work may contribute to a variety of data products and follow-up research. This internship is contingent upon securing funds before the summer of 2025.

FAQs

Education level: By and large, RFF summer research internships are geared toward graduate students (either Masters or PhD), although some openings are available to advanced undergraduates. In the past, some graduate-level interns have also chosen to continue collaborating with RFF on academic journal articles beyond their paid internships. Please see individual job descriptions (linked above) for specific education requirements of the various roles.

Compensation: All RFF internships are paid. We offer a sliding pay scale for interns based on the level of completion in their degree programs, ranging from $17.95 per hour to $26 per hour.