Warming up to It
Does framing climate change policies to fit with epistemic needs for predictability reduce conservatives’ opposition?
Joris Lammers, Anna Schulte & Matthew Baldwin
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
A short-term obstacle to united political action to fight climate change in various countries is opposition to pro-environmental policies among conservatives. Three preregistered studies test the hypothesis that because conservatives have a higher need for closure than liberals (Hypothesis 1), framing pro-environmental policies in a way that appeals to the need for closure, reduces conservatives’ opposition to these policies (Hypothesis 2). Study 1 confirms Hypothesis 1. Next, two studies test Hypothesis 2 and find that conservatives are less opposed to pro-environmental policies proposed by a politician (Study 2) or an NGO (Study 3) if these policies are framed in a way that appeals to the need for closure, while the opposite is the case for liberals. Across these two studies, we also test the underlying process but find no evidence for the idea that differences in need for closure mediate the effect (Hypothesis 3a). Instead, the effect is primarily driven by inferences about group membership and ingroup bias (Hypothesis 3b, non-preregistered). That is, these data suggest that framing policies to appeal to closure needs reduces conservatives’ opposition because they infer that the policy is proposed by a fellow conservative.
Naming and shaming as a strategy for enforcing the Paris Agreement: The role of political institutions and public concern
Astrid Dannenberg et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 3 October 2023
Abstract:
Enforcement is a challenge for effective international cooperation. In human rights and environmental law, along with many other domains of international cooperation, “naming and shaming” is often used as an enforcement mechanism in the absence of stronger alternatives. Naming and shaming hinges on the ability to identify countries whose efforts are inadequate and effectively shame them toward better behavior. Research on this approach has struggled to identify factors that explain when it influences state behavior in ways that lead to more cooperation. Via survey of a large (N = 910) novel sample of experienced diplomats involved in the design of the Paris Agreement, we find support for the proposition that naming and shaming is most accepted and effective in influencing the behavior of countries that have high-quality political institutions, strong internal concern about climate change, and ambitious and credible international climate commitments. Naming and shaming appears less effective in other countries, so further enforcement mechanisms will be needed for truly global cooperation. We also find that the climate diplomacy experts favor a process of naming and shaming that relies on official intergovernmental actors, in contrast with studies suggesting that NGOs, media, and other private actors are more effective at naming and shaming. We suggest that these tensions -- the inability for naming and shaming to work effectively within the countries least motivated for climate action and the preference for namers and shamers that seem least likely to be effective -- will become central policy debates around making cooperation on climate change more enforceable.
An economic analysis of United States public transit carbon emissions dynamics
Robert Huang & Matthew Kahn
Regional Science and Urban Economics, November 2023
Abstract:
During a time of rising concern about climate change, the urban public transit sector has not significantly reduced its carbon footprint. Using data from the nation's transit agencies over the years 2002–2019, we document that the energy efficiency gains of United States public transit lagged the gains of European public transit and the domestic private transportation. The carbon footprint of a transportation provider depends on scale, composition, and technique effects. We use this accounting framework to explore several possible explanations for our findings. We contrast the incentive effects that a private entity versus a public transit agency faces in decarbonizing.
Potential Benefits in Remapping the Special Flood Hazard Area: Evidence from the U.S. Housing Market
Adam Pollack et al.
Journal of Housing Economics, September 2023
Abstract:
A typical U.S. homebuyer's understanding of whether a property faces flood risk is based on whether the property is located inside the National Flood Insurance Program's (NFIP) Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA). The SFHA boundary, however, may bias homebuyers’ perceptions of flood risk relative to unobserved true risk because the SFHA is an incomplete, and sometimes inaccurate, representation of flood hazards. Using a national dataset of property transactions, flood hazard data from the First Street Foundation, state-level measures of flood disclosure laws, and a spatially restricted triple-difference design, we distinguish capitalization effects of policy-driven (SFHA) versus quasi-objective (First Street) indicators of flood hazard. We identify these effects by assessing thousands of local spatial interactions between property SFHA designations, measures of quasi-objective flood hazard, and being in a state that mandates flood history disclosures. Being inside the SFHA generates a risk discount, but the signal is muted relative to underlying hazard exposure. Further, the SFHA signal can result in inefficient discounts for properties erroneously mapped in the SFHA. Disclosure requirements about flood history accentuate price effects for hazardous properties and result in more adequate risk internalization. In the absence of disclosures, however, we find either no or a weak risk signal for houses outside the SFHA that face flood hazard. Our results highlight potential benefits of updating SFHA boundaries to include all houses that may experience flooding, and argue in favor of requiring flood-related disclosures from sellers to improve the market's ability to internalize flood risk.
Causal Effects of Renewable Portfolio Standards on Renewable Investments and Generation: The Role of Heterogeneity and Dynamics
Olivier Deschenes, Christopher Malloy & Gavin MacDonald
NBER Working Paper, August 2023
Abstract:
Despite a 30-year long history, Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) remain controversial and debates continue to surround their efficacy in leading the low-carbon transition in the electricity sector. Contributing to the ongoing debates is the lack of definitive causal evidence on their impact on investments in renewable capacity and generation. This paper provides the most detailed analysis to date of the impact of RPSs on renewable electricity capacity investments and on generation. We use state-level data from 1990-2019 and recent econometric methods designed to address dynamic and heterogeneous treatment effects in a staggered adoption panel data design. We find that, on average, RPS policies increase wind generation capacity by 600-1200 MW, a 44% increase, but have no significant effect on investments in solar capacity. Additionally, we demonstrate that RPSs have slow dynamic effects: most of the capacity additions occur 5 years after RPS implementation. Estimates for wind and solar electricity generation mimic those for capacity investments. We also find similar results using an alternate treatment definition that allows states to meet their RPS requirements with pre-existing renewable generation and renewable generation from nearby states.
Bitcoin and Carbon Dioxide Emissions: Evidence from Daily Production Decisions
Anna Papp, Douglas Almond & Shuang Zhang
NBER Working Paper, September 2023
Abstract:
Environmental externalities from cryptomining may be large, but have not been linked causally to mining incentives. We exploit daily variation in Bitcoin price as a natural experiment for an 86 megawatt coal-fired power plant with on-site cryptomining. We find that carbon emissions respond swiftly to mining incentives, with price elasticities of 0.69-0.71 in the short-run and 0.33-0.40 in the longer run. A $1 increase in Bitcoin price leads to $3.11-$6.79 in external damages from carbon emissions alone, well exceeding cryptomining’s value added (using a $190 social cost of carbon, but ignoring increased local air pollution). As cryptomining requires ever more computing power to mine a given number of blocks, our study highlights both the revitalization of US fossil assets and the potential value of financial industry accounting standards that incorporate cryptomining externalities.
Seasonal advance of intense tropical cyclones in a warming climate
Kaiyue Shan et al.
Nature, forthcoming
Abstract:
Intense tropical cyclones (TCs), which often peak in autumn, have destructive impacts on life and property, making it crucial to determine whether any changes in intense TCs are likely to occur. Here, we identify a significant seasonal advance of intense TCs since the 1980s in most tropical oceans, with earlier-shifting rates of 3.7 and 3.2 days per decade for the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, respectively. This seasonal advance of intense TCs is closely related to the seasonal advance of rapid intensification events, favoured by the observed earlier onset of favourable oceanic conditions. Using simulations from multiple global climate models, large ensembles and individual forcing experiments, the earlier onset of favourable oceanic conditions is detectable and primarily driven by greenhouse gas forcing. The seasonal advance of intense TCs will increase the likelihood of intersecting with other extreme rainfall events, which usually peak in summer, thereby leading to disproportionate impacts.
Clean Growth
Costas Arkolakis & Conor Walsh
NBER Working Paper, August 2023
Abstract:
We provide a spatial theory of clean growth to assess the global impact of the rise of renewable energy. We model the details of the combined production and transmission network of electricity (“the grid”) that determine the supply and losses of energy in space. The local rate of clean energy adoption depends on learning-by-doing, the global electricity and trade network, and regional comparative advantage in renewable resources. We use the model to measure the aggregate and spatial implications of clean growth. We find that the world’s power system is likely to be dominated by renewables by 2040 in a range of scenarios, with substantial welfare gains, even in the absence of policy. Incorporating policy, we find that the US Inflation Reduction Act significantly accelerates renewable uptake, and generates substantial economic benefits. In addition, planned grid improvements lower prices substantially in many areas of the US, justifying their cost of construction.
Distributional Equity in the Employment and Wage Impacts of Energy Transitions
Ben Gilbert, Hannah Gagarin & Ben Hoen
NBER Working Paper, August 2023
Abstract:
We use restricted-access, geocoded data on the near-universe of workers in 23 U.S. states in order to quantify the impact of wind energy development on local earnings and employment, by race, ethnicity, sex, and educational attainment. We find the largest relative impacts for workers without a high school education, or workers with a college education, in addition to other systematic differences across sub-populations. We compare these results to estimates using county aggregates of the worker-level data, such as can be obtained using publicly available data. We find that (a) county-level estimates are dramatically dampened relative to geocoded worker-level estimates, and (b) the degree of bias differs by sub-population such that qualitative comparisons of impacts are not consistent using restricted-access data versus county-level data for most sub-populations. We discuss implications for achieving equity goals within energy transition policies.
Better clean or efficient? Panel regressions
Nicolas Schneider & Avik Sinha
Climatic Change, August 2023
Abstract:
Most national and international climate agendas promote energy efficiency and fossil to renewable energy substitution as key future policy directions. This paper surveys macro-energy-emission-output panel assessments and shows that previously estimated carbon response functions present diverging shapes with less evidence on the confounding role of development. This study applies a multivariate regression equation and both Pesaran (1995) and Pesaran (2006) mean group estimators with common correlated effects to illustrative samples of countries with data covering five decades. For all groups, long-run panel coefficients show that energy efficiency improvements associate with larger negative carbon responses than fossil-to-renewable energy shifts. Estimates derived from high-income economies are much smaller in magnitude and significance compared to those of developing countries, which is further corroborated by country-level parameters. This implies that least-energy efficient and -green economies can benefit from a wider set of carbon abatement policies.
Game, Sweat, Match: Temperature and Elite Worker Productivity
Marshall Burke et al.
NBER Working Paper, August 2023
Abstract:
The effect of hot temperatures on labor productivity is thought to be a key channel through which a warming climate will impact the economy, and these impacts could help explain broader observed relationships between temperature and economic output. Yet for many workers and jobs, especially the high-wage service-economy work that constitutes a large share of total economic output in wealthy nations, productivity is hard to measure and thus climate impacts hard to quantify. We study a high-wage job where individual productivity is readily observable: professional tennis. Using 15 years of data on 177 thousand tennis matches merged to hourly temperature data, we study the effects of temperature on tennis performance in contemporaneous and future matches. Variation in player birthplace and residence allows us to study whether players adapt to heat, and data from betting markets allows us to evaluate whether markets price climate risk. We find that hot temperatures increase contemporaneous errors and retirements, and reduce win probability in the subsequent match. In percentage terms, estimated effects on earnings are smaller than lower-wage settings studied in existing literature. By most measures, top players are less affected by hot temperatures. Most tennis betting markets appear to accurately price climate risk, and temperature impacts do not appear to offer profitable arbitrage opportunities.