Dirty work
Employment trends in the U.S. Electricity Sector, 2008–2012
Drew Haerer & Lincoln Pratson
Energy Policy, July 2015, Pages 85–98
Abstract:
Between 2008–2012, electricity generated (GWh) from coal, the longtime dominant fuel for electric power in the US, declined 24%, while electricity generated from natural gas, wind and solar grew by 39%, 154%, and 400%, respectively. These shifts had major effects on domestic employment in those sectors of the coal, natural gas, wind and solar industries involved in operations and maintenance (O&M) activities for electricity generation. Using an economic input–output model, we estimate that the coal industry lost more than 49,000 jobs (12%) nationally over the five-year period, while in the natural gas, solar, and wind industries, employment increased by nearly 220,000 jobs (21%). We also combine published ratios for jobs per unit of fuel production and per megawatt of power plant capacity with site-specific data on fuel production and power plant retirements, additions and capacity changes to estimate and map direct job changes at the county level. The maps show that job increases in the natural gas, solar and wind industries generally did not occur where there were significant job losses in the coal industry, particularly in West Virginia and Kentucky.
---------------------
Niamh Murtagh et al.
Journal of Environmental Psychology, June 2015, Pages 139–148
Abstract:
The global deployment of technology to aid mitigation of climate change has great potential but the realisation of much of this potential depends on behavioural response. A culturally pervasive reliance on and belief in technology raises the risk that dependence on technology will hamper human actions of mitigation. Theory suggests that ‘green’ behaviour may be undermined by automated technology but empirical investigation has been lacking. We examined the effect of the prospect of automation on three everyday behaviours with environmental impact. Based on evidence from observational and experimental studies, we demonstrated that the prospect of automation can undermine even simple actions for sustainability. Further, we examined the process by which automated technology influences behaviour and suggest that automation may impair personal responsibility for action.
---------------------
Juliet Elu & Gregory Price
Review of Black Political Economy, June 2015, Pages 135-154
Abstract:
This paper considers whether race conditions the welfare gains associated with the purchase of cars and trucks that comply with National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency Standards . We utilize data from the General Social Survey on respondent stated preferences for the extent to which they value fuel-efficient cars and trucks to estimate the maximum market price they are willing to pay for fuel-efficient cars and trucks. Multinomial and Binary Logit parameter estimates from an inverse demand maximum price valuation specification reveal that relative to non-black Americans, black Americans place less value on fuel-efficient cars and trucks. Our results suggest that federal Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency Standards policy is a source of inegalitarian and racially stratified welfare outcomes as relative to non-black Americans, black Americans gain less consumer’s surplus from fuel-efficient cars and trucks.
---------------------
Elissa Wilker et al.
Stroke, forthcoming
Background and Purpose: Long-term exposure to ambient air pollution is associated with cerebrovascular disease and cognitive impairment, but whether it is related to structural changes in the brain is not clear. We examined the associations between residential long-term exposure to ambient air pollution and markers of brain aging using magnetic resonance imaging.
Methods: Framingham Offspring Study participants who attended the seventh examination were at least 60 years old and free of dementia and stroke were included. We evaluated associations between exposures (fine particulate matter [PM2.5] and residential proximity to major roadways) and measures of total cerebral brain volume, hippocampal volume, white matter hyperintensity volume (log-transformed and extensive white matter hyperintensity volume for age), and covert brain infarcts. Models were adjusted for age, clinical covariates, indicators of socioeconomic position, and temporal trends.
Results: A 2-μg/m3 increase in PM2.5 was associated with −0.32% (95% confidence interval, −0.59 to −0.05) smaller total cerebral brain volume and 1.46 (95% confidence interval, 1.10 to 1.94) higher odds of covert brain infarcts. Living further away from a major roadway was associated with 0.10 (95% confidence interval, 0.01 to 0.19) greater log-transformed white matter hyperintensity volume for an interquartile range difference in distance, but no clear pattern of association was observed for extensive white matter.
Conclusions: Exposure to elevated levels of PM2.5 was associated with smaller total cerebral brain volume, a marker of age-associated brain atrophy, and with higher odds of covert brain infarcts. These findings suggest that air pollution is associated with insidious effects on structural brain aging even in dementia- and stroke-free persons.
---------------------
David Rich et al.
Environmental Health Perspectives, forthcoming
Objectives: Using the natural experiment of air pollution declines during the 2008 Beijing Olympics, we evaluated whether having specific months of pregnancy (i.e. 1st…8th) during the 2008 Olympic period was associated with larger birth weights, compared with pregnancies during the same dates in 2007 or 2009.
Methods: Using n=83,672 term births to mothers residing in 4 urban districts of Beijing, we estimated the difference in birth weight associated with having individual months of pregnancy during the 2008 Olympics (8/8/08–9/24/08) compared to the same dates in 2007/2009. We also estimated the difference in birth weight associated with interquartile range (IQR) increases in mean ambient particulate matter <2.5 µm in aerodynamic diameter (PM2.5), sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and carbon monoxide (CO) concentrations during each pregnancy month.
Results: Babies with their 8th month of pregnancy during the 2008 Olympics were, on average, 23g larger (95% CI: 5g, 40g) than babies having their 8th month in 2007 or 2009. IQR increases in PM2.5 (19.8 µg/m3), CO (0.3 ppm), SO2 (1.8 ppb), and NO2 (13.6 ppb) concentrations during the 8th month of pregnancy were associated with 18g (-32g, -3g), 17g (95% CI: -28g, -6g), 23g (95% CI: -36g, -10g), and 34g (95% CI: -70g, 3g) decreases in birth weight, respectively. We did not see significant associations for months 1-7.
Conclusions: Short-term decreases in air pollution late in pregnancy in Beijing during the 2008 Summer Olympics, a normally heavily polluted city, were associated with higher birth weight.
---------------------
Combined effects of prenatal polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and material hardship on child IQ
Julia Vishnevetsky et al.
Neurotoxicology and Teratology, forthcoming
Objectives: We examined whether the association between child IQ and prenatal exposure to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons differed between groups of children whose mothers reported high vs. low material hardship during their pregnancy and through child age 5. We tested statistical interactions between hardships and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, as measured by DNA adducts in cord blood, to determine whether material hardship exacerbated the association between adducts and IQ scores.
Design: Prospective cohort. Participants were recruited from 1998 to 2006 and followed from gestation through age 7 years.
Setting: Urban community (New York City)
Participants: A community-based sample of 276 minority urban youth
Results: Significant inverse effects of high cord PAH–DNA adducts on full scale IQ, perceptual reasoning and working memory scores were observed in the groups whose mothers reported a high level of material hardship during pregnancy or recurring high hardship into the child's early years, and not in those without reported high hardship. Significant interactions were observed between high cord adducts and prenatal hardship on working memory scores (β = − 8.07, 95% CI (− 14.48, − 1.66)) and between high cord adducts and recurrent material hardship (β = − 9.82, 95% CI (− 16.22, − 3.42)).
Conclusion: The findings add to other evidence that socioeconomic disadvantage can increase the adverse effects of toxic physical “stressors” like air pollutants. Observed associations between high cord adducts and reduced IQ were significant only among the group of children whose mothers reported high material hardship. These results indicate the need for a multifaceted approach to prevention.
---------------------
The U.S. Electricity Industry After 20 Years of Restructuring
Severin Borenstein & James Bushnell
NBER Working Paper, April 2015
Abstract:
Prior to the 1990s, most electricity customers in the U.S. were served by regulated, vertically-integrated, monopoly utilities that handled electricity generation, transmission, local distribution and billing/collections. Regulators set retail electricity prices to allow the utility to recover its prudently incurred costs, a process known as cost-of-service regulation. During the 1990s, this model was disrupted in many states by "electricity restructuring," a term used to describe legal changes that allowed both non-utility generators to sell electricity to utilities — displacing the utility generation function — and/or "retail service providers" to buy electricity from generators and sell to end-use customers — displacing the utility procurement and billing functions. We review the original economic arguments for electricity restructuring, the potential winners and losers from these changes, and what has actually happened in the subsequent years. We argue that the greatest political motivation for restructuring was rent shifting, not efficiency improvements, and that this explanation is supported by observed waxing and waning of political enthusiasm for electricity reform. While electricity restructuring has brought significant efficiency improvements in generation, it has generally been viewed as a disappointment because the price-reduction promises made by some advocates were based on politically-unsustainable rent transfers. In reality, the electricity rate changes since restructuring have been driven more by exogenous factors — such as generation technology advances and natural gas price fluctuations — than by the effects of restructuring. We argue that a similar dynamic underpins the current political momentum behind distributed generation (primarily rooftop solar PV) which remains costly from a societal viewpoint, but privately economic due to the rent transfers it enables.
---------------------
Luis Orea, Manuel Llorca & Massimo Filippini
Energy Economics, May 2015, Pages 599–609
Abstract:
This paper brings attention to the fact that the energy demand frontier model introduced by Filippini and Hunt (2011, 2012) is closely connected to the measurement of the so-called rebound effect associated with improvements in energy efficiency. In particular, we show that their model implicitly imposes a zero rebound effect, which contradicts most of the available empirical evidence on this issue. We relax this restrictive assumption through the modelling of a rebound-effect function that mitigates or intensifies the effect of an efficiency improvement on energy consumption. We illustrate our model with an empirical application that aims to estimate a US frontier residential aggregate energy demand function using panel data for 48 states over the period 1995 to 2011. Average values of the rebound effect in the range of 56-80% are found. Therefore, policymakers should be aware that most of the expected energy reduction from efficiency improvements may not be achieved.
---------------------
Adopting Clean Fuels and Technologies on School Buses: Pollution and Health Impacts in Children
Sara Adar et al.
American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, forthcoming
Background: Over 25 million American children breathe polluted air on diesel school buses. Emission reduction policies exist but the health impacts to individual children have not been evaluated.
Methods: Using a natural experiment, we characterized the exposures and health of 275 school bus riders before, during, and after the adoption of clean technologies and fuels between 2005 and 2009. Air pollution was measured during 597 trips on 188 school buses. Repeated measures of exhaled nitric oxide (FENO), lung function (forced expiratory volume in the first second (FEV1), forced vital capacity (FVC)) and absenteeism were also collected monthly (1,768 visits). Mixed-effects models longitudinally related the adoption of diesel oxidation catalysts (DOC), closed crankcase ventilation systems (CCV), ultralow sulfur diesel (ULSD), or biodiesel with exposures and health.
Results: Fine and ultrafine particle concentrations were 10-50% lower on buses using ULSD, DOCs, and/or CCVs. ULSD adoption was also associated with -16% (95% CI: -10, -21%) reduced FENO, 0.02 (95% CI: 0.003, 0.05) and 0.01 (95% CI: -0.006, 0.03) L/year greater changes in FVC and FEV1, respectively, and -8% (95% CI: -16.0, -0.7%) lower absenteeism with stronger associations among asthmatics. DOCs and, to a lesser extent CCVs, also were associated with improved FENO, FVC growth, and absenteeism, but these findings were primarily restricted to persistent asthmatics and were often sensitive to control for ULSD. No health benefits were noted for biodiesel. Extrapolating to the US population, changed fuel/technologies likely reduced absenteeism by >14 million/year.
Conclusions: National and local diesel policies appear to have reduced children’s exposures and improved health.
---------------------
Politics, proximity and the pipeline: Mapping public attitudes toward Keystone XL
Timothy Gravelle & Erick Lachapelle
Energy Policy, August 2015, Pages 99–108
Abstract:
The politics of oil pipelines have become increasingly salient in American politics in recent years. In particular, debates about economic benefits, energy security and environmental impact have been provoked by the proposed Keystone XL pipeline expansion intended to take bitumen from northern Alberta in Canada to refineries on the Gulf Coast in Texas. Drawing on data from recent surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center, this article asks a series of questions. What levels of support for (and opposition to) the pipeline exist among the American public? What are the roles of political factors (such as party identification and ideology), economic attitudes, environmental attitudes and proximity to the proposed pipeline route in shaping attitudes toward the pipeline? And how do political factors and proximity to the pipeline interact? We find that partisanship and ideology drive attitudes toward the Keystone XL pipeline, and that the effect of ideology is attenuated by proximity to the proposed route. The policy implications of these findings for energy infrastructure siting controversies are discussed.
---------------------
Welfare and Distributional Implications of Shale Gas
Catherine Hausman & Ryan Kellogg
NBER Working Paper, April 2015
Abstract:
Technological innovations in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing have enabled tremendous amounts of natural gas to be extracted profitably from underground shale formations that were long thought to be uneconomical. In this paper, we provide the first estimates of broad-scale welfare and distributional implications of this supply boom. We provide new estimates of supply and demand elasticities, which we use to estimate the drop in natural gas prices that is attributable to the supply expansion. We calculate large, positive welfare impacts for four broad sectors of gas consumption (residential, commercial, industrial, and electric power), and a negative impact for producers, with variation across regions. We then examine the evidence for a gas-led "manufacturing renaissance" and for pass-through to prices of products such as retail natural gas, retail electricity, and commodity chemicals. We conclude with a discussion of environmental externalities from unconventional natural gas, including limitations of the current regulatory environment. Overall, we find that between 2007 and 2013 the shale gas revolution led to an increase in welfare for natural gas consumers and producers of $48 billion per year, but more data are needed on the extent and valuation of the environmental impacts of shale gas production.
---------------------
William Seth Teague, Cathleen Zick & Ken Smith
Policy Studies Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
In recent years, communities have begun to implement both “soft” and mandatory policies designed to address worsening air quality. Voluntary or soft transportation policies have included air quality alert systems that encourage people not to drive on days when the air quality index is above a specified threshold and public education/action campaigns that focus on reducing automobile related travel. In this article, we evaluate the effectiveness of one such soft policy, the Clear the Air Challenge (CAC), in reducing ground-level ozone during the Wasatch Front's summer ozone season. Using daily ozone data and color-coded daily air quality designations from 2006 through 2012, we estimate a range of nonequivalent control group models. In only one of the models does the CAC generate a statistically significant but small reduction in ground-level ozone. Future research should assess the full range of costs and benefits to the public associated with such soft transport policies.
---------------------
Paul Dolan & Robert Metcalfe
University of Chicago Working Paper, April 2015
Abstract:
There is increasing research on the impact of social norms on economic behavior. The research to date has a number of limitations: 1) it has not de-coupled the impact of the norm and the knowledge required to understand how to change behavior based upon it; and 2) it has not understood the impact of social norms under different incentive structures. We address these limitations using two natural field experiments. We find, firstly, that norms change energy consumption irrespective of whether information is provided or not. We find that social norms reduce consumption by around 6% (0.2 standard deviations). Secondly, we find that large financial rewards for targeted consumption reductions work very well in reducing consumption, with a 8% reduction (0.35 standard deviations) in energy consumption. The effect persists even when the financial incentive has been removed, suggesting no crowding out of financial incentives. Perhaps most interestingly, we find that the large effect of financial incentives completely disappears when information on social norms is included.
---------------------
Global, regional and local health impacts of civil aviation emissions
Steve Yim et al.
Environmental Research Letters, March 2015
Abstract:
Aviation emissions impact surface air quality at multiple scales — from near-airport pollution peaks associated with airport landing and take off (LTO) emissions, to intercontinental pollution attributable to aircraft cruise emissions. Previous studies have quantified aviation's air quality impacts around a specific airport, in a specific region, or at the global scale. However, no study has assessed the air quality and human health impacts of aviation, capturing effects on all aforementioned scales. This study uses a multi-scale modeling approach to quantify and monetize the air quality impact of civil aviation emissions, approximating effects of aircraft plume dynamics-related local dispersion (~1 km), near-airport dispersion (~10 km), regional (~1000 km) and global (~10 000 km) scale chemistry and transport. We use concentration-response functions to estimate premature deaths due to population exposure to aviation-attributable PM2.5 and ozone, finding that aviation emissions cause ~16 000 (90% CI: 8300–24 000) premature deaths per year. Of these, LTO emissions contribute a quarter. Our estimate shows that premature deaths due to long-term exposure to aviation-attributable PM2.5 and O3 lead to costs of ~$21 bn per year. We compare these costs to other societal costs of aviation and find that they are on the same order of magnitude as global aviation-attributable climate costs, and one order of magnitude larger than aviation-attributable accident and noise costs.