There is good news and bad news about the clean energy transition. The good news is that half the new electric generating capacity installed worldwide in 2008-2010 was renewable. The bad news is that half wasn’t.
To avoid rapid global warming and its attendant human and economic risks, we need to accelerate the transition. We need to do more than slow growth in the use of fossil fuels: we need to cut their use substantially. This will require significantly ramped up investments worldwide in energy efficiency and clean energy.
One way to encourage this investment is to base public policies on the full range of benefits from reduced burning of fossil fuels – not only global benefits from reduced greenhouse gas emissions, but also local benefits from reduced emissions of particulates, nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, mercury, benzene, and other toxic pollutants.
In the European Union, research has shown that the clean air benefits alone are sufficient to justify investments in energy efficiency and renewables. “The welfare effects of climate policy seem to be positive,” a 2006 report for the Netherlands Environmental Agency concluded, “even when the long-term benefits of avoided climate impacts are not taken into account.”
The clean air co-benefits of climate policy may be even greater elsewhere, in countries with less stringent air pollution controls than Europe. In a recent study we cite World Bank data indicating that in the United States the human health damages from particulate emissions are six times higher per ton of carbon dioxide than the average for Germany, France and the United Kingdom. In China, the ratio is more than ten times higher.
It would be ironic if energy policies designed to internalize the external costs of greenhouse gas emissions were to ignore the external costs of co-pollutants. But there is an important difference between two. The benefits of reduced greenhouse gas emissions are global, whereas air quality benefits of reduced co-pollutant emissions are local.
The difference matters for three reasons:
- Efficiency: From a climate change standpoint, it doesn’t matter where emission reductions occur. From an air quality standpoint, it can matter a lot. Co-pollutant damages vary depending on the type of fossil fuel, pollution control technologies, and the population density of the surrounding area. Efficient policy design would aim for greater emission reductions where the public health benefits are greater.
- Equity: Low-income and minority communities often bear disproportionate pollution burdens. In the United States, for example, blacks, Latinos and other minorities account for 50% of the human health impacts from air toxics emissions from petroleum refineries, considerably more than their 31% share in the national population. Air quality benefits are in the sweet spot where equity and efficiency intersect.
- Political salience: Last but not least, the air quality benefits of reduced use of fossil fuels are immediate as well as local. For both reasons, they may be critical in building public support for clean energy policies. Neglecting these benefits in policy design would not only be tantamount leaving health care dollars lying on the ground – or floating in the air – it would also mean foregoing crucial allies in the battle to curb the use of fossil fuels.
In our study, Cooling the Planet, Clearing the Air, we outline a variety of ways to bring air quality benefits to bear on climate policy. Specific locations can be designated as priority zones under a carbon pricing system, whether a tax or cap-and-permit system. Similarly, specific industrial facilities and sectors can be assigned priority for emission reductions. Community benefit funds can be established to channel some of the rent generated by carbon pricing into environmental and public health investments in overburdened communities.
In the 20th century, environmentalists urged us to “think globally, act locally.” As we embark on the clean energy transition of the 21st century, we also need to think locally when acting globally.
Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn
Dear Truthout Community,
If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.
We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.
Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.
There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.
Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?
It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.
We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.
We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.
Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment. We are presently looking for 201 new monthly donors in the next 24 hours.
We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.
With love, rage, and solidarity,
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