Internship Location: Washington DC
Organization Type: Nonprofit/NGO
Policy Areas: Transportation & Environment
During my internship at the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT), I completed policy research and data analysis for its annual Global Zero-Emission Vehicle report. I started by monitoring and researching new/changing electric vehicle policies in the last year, and then analyzed updated EV sales data and used policies and market developments to project EV sales through 2050. Throughout this process I learned how to quantify impacts of certain policies by translating policy goals into effects on electric vehicle sales, road transport CO2 emissions, energy consumption, etc. The skills I learned through La Follette in understanding the policy process, from initial justification to implementation, were very helpful in this internship. As I worked on emerging policies, it was essential to understand the reasonings for these policies, as well as the likelihood of them being successful, in order to correctly project the impacts. I was given a lot of responsibilities in this internship, such as writing sections of the report and calculating important projections, but this ended up being really valuable to me as it allowed me to improve my skills, become more confident professionally, and gain tangible evidence of my work. Another valuable aspect of this internship was being able to attend meetings with consultants and partner organizations/universities, where I learned more about the clean transportation industry and was exposed to concepts outside of my day-to-day project work. Overall, this experience was enriching and I would recommend the ICCT to La Follette students who have an interest in the intersection between economics and energy/environmental policy.