Intern: Energy and Climate Policy

Overview

The American Enterprise Institute's Center for Technology, Science, and Energy (CTSE) seeks a driven, research-oriented intern for fall 2026. The intern will work closely with CTSE scholars and staff on research spanning energy economics, electricity regulation, and the institutions that govern technology and innovation. CTSE scholars produce empirically grounded, policy-relevant work on these questions, and the intern will contribute directly to active research projects.

The intern will support two main streams of work. The first is climate and energy data:

• Compiling, cleaning, and verifying climate and energy datasets, such as emissions, energy production and consumption, disaster-loss, and decarbonization data;
• Analyzing trends across these datasets and producing visualizations and short written summaries to communicate findings;
• Assembling and verifying regulatory and tariff data, including retrieving primary-source documents such as utility rate schedules and reconciling them against database records.

The second is background research and editorial support:

• Conducting background research for reports, columns, public comments, and scholarly publications;
• Fact-checking and verifying claims, figures, and citations;
• Drafting and editing memos, report sections, and other written materials;
• tracking regulatory and policy developments, including FERC proceedings, and summarizing them for the team.

Candidates are expected to:

• Be highly interested in energy, regulatory, and climate policy;
• Have strong research skills and keen attention to detail;
• Be effective writers and careful editors;
• Be comfortable working with data in spreadsheets;
• Have a working knowledge of American political and regulatory institutions;
• Be comfortable working independently on a project and eager to learn new skills on the job.

Applicants who go above and beyond will:

• Have taken coursework, or have work experience, in energy economics, regulation, or electricity markets;
• Be familiar with FERC and state PUC processes, tariffs, or rate design;
• Demonstrate proficiency in Python and/or R, including cleaning messy or unstructured source data;
• Have experience building or maintaining structured datasets.

Candidates who are able to participate in the program on an in-person basis for 30-40 hours a week are encouraged to apply.

About AEI Internships

AEI internships offer a unique opportunity for undergraduates, graduate students, and recent graduates to gain experience in research, writing, business, and communications at one of the nation’s leading think tanks. Competitive candidates will generally have a GPA of 3.5 or higher from a top-ranking college or university. AEI’s internship program runs for 12 weeks, and all related programming will take place in-person in Washington, DC.

Please see the internship program home page for updates about the program.

The spring program dates are either Tuesday, January 12, to Friday, April 2, or Tuesday, January 19, to Friday, April 9.