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09/19/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 09/19/2024 08:47
Policies for Reducing the Impacts of Power Sector Air Pollution on Disadvantaged Americans
Policies for Reducing the Impacts of Power Sector Air Pollution on Disadvantaged Americans
This working paper explores the air quality changes from various policies and their impact on disadvantaged Americans.
Date
Sept. 19, 2024
Authors
Sally Robson, Ethan Russell, Ana Valera Valera, and Daniel Shawhan
Publication
Working PaperReading time
3 minutesAbstract
Environmental policymakers in the United States are giving increasing attention to reducing the burden on Americans who face both environmental and economic disadvantages. This study considers an important part of the burden: the concentration of airborne fine particulate matter (PM2.5) due to emissions from the nation's power sector. Using a highly detailed simulation model of the US power sector paired with a model of PM2.5 formation and dispersion, the study projects some of the environmental and economic effects of nationwide implementation of different policies to reduce power plants' contributions to PM2.5 in environmentally overburdened, disadvantaged communities (EO DACs). Effects from reduced ground-level ozone also are addressed. Results are compared with a policy that is not geographically targeted-a national price on power sector carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. In addition to the effects on EO DACs, we project the effects for all Americans, Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Americans in the lowest income quintile, and Americans in highly environmentally burdened (not necessarily disadvantaged) areas. The national power sector CO2 emissions price is the most cost-effective policy for reducing premature mortality from PM2.5 exposure in EO DACs. The other policies, which are geographically targeted toward reducing burdens in EO DACs, have the unintended consequence of increasing PM2.5 exposure in some of those areas.
Executive Summary
Environmental policymakers in the United States are giving increasing attention to a longstanding concern: reducing the burden on Americans who face both environmental and economic disadvantages. Ample evidence indicates that environmental burdens fall disproportionately on many people of color and low-income people. These disparities raise fundamental questions of equity and justice that policymakers and researchers are trying to address.
This study considers a particular part of that environmental burden-disparities in premature mortality from exposure to airborne fine particulate matter (PM2.5) resulting from power sector emissions. Through simulation analysis, the study assesses the effects of several types of policies intended to improve the circumstances of people and communities facing environmental and economic disadvantages. The study assesses the health effects of the policies on certain disadvantaged communities and on different population groups at the national level, as well as on the population as a whole. It also assesses the costs of implementing the various policies, and their cost-effectiveness per death avoided by reducing PM2.5 concentrations.The model also accounts for the considerably smaller number of deaths avoided by the effects of policies in reducing ground level ozone. In our simulations, we implement each policy across the whole contiguous US.
Using a highly detailed simulation model of the power sector paired with a model of PM2.5 formation and dispersion, the study projects the environmental and economic effects of several policies that reduce ambient PM2.5 in geographic areas referred to as environmentally overburdened, disadvantaged communities (EO DACs). DACs are identified at the level of census tracts based on socioeconomic and environmental burdens, using the US government's Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool. EO DACs are DACs whose environmental quality is below average relative to nearby non disadvantaged communities. In addition to the effects for EO DACs and for society as a whole, we project the effects for Black Americans, Hispanic Americans, Americans in the lowest income quintile, and Americans in areas with a high environmental burden (whether those areas are otherwise disadvantaged or not).
Three of the targeted policies we simulate are designed to restrict power plants within EO DACs ("within-DAC policies"). They are loosely inspired by a 2022 New Jersey law, though we are not modeling all of the specific provisions of that legislation, and how it will be implemented is uncertain. Another targeted policy, which we call Upwind Limits, is designed to prevent any power plant from contributing more than a de minimis amount of pollution to any EO DAC. It is loosely inspired by a 2023 New York law, though again, we are not modeling all of the specific provisions of that legislation, and how it will be implemented is uncertain. For comparison, the study also analyzes the effects of a hypothetical $15-per-ton CO2 Pricing policy, which by its nature does not target EO DACs.