Air Pollution Challenges in Developing Countries
Paper Session
Tuesday, Jan. 5, 2021 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM (EST)
- Chair: Maureen Cropper, University of Maryland-College Park
Ambiguous Air Pollution Effects of China’s COVID-19 Lockdown
Abstract
Reductions in ambient pollution have been taken as an indisputable "silver lining" to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Indeed, worldwide economic contraction induced by COVID-19 lockdowns should generate global air quality improvements ceteris paribus, including to China's notoriously-poor air quality. We analyze China's official pollution monitor data and account for the large, recurrent improvement in air quality following Lunar New Year (LNY), which essentially coincided with lockdowns in 2020. With the important exception of NO2, China's air quality improvements in 2020 are smaller than we should expect near the pandemic's epicenter: Hubei province. Compared with LNY improvements experienced in 2018 and 2019 in Hubei, we see smaller improvements in SO2 while ozone concentrations increased in both relative and absolute terms (roughly doubling). Similar patterns are found for the six provinces neighboring Hubei. We conclude that COVID-19 had ambiguous impacts on China's pollution, with evidence of relative deterioration in air quality near the Pandemic's epicenter.Environmental Protection or Local Protectionism? Evidence from Tailpipe Emission Standards in China
Abstract
Under the stated goal of reducing local air pollution, many cities in China restricted the import of used vehicles from other cities that do not meet certain tailpipe emission standards. Using the universe of new and used vehicle registration, we leverage the staggered removal of the restriction across cities during 2016-2018 to examine the impact of the policy and shed light on the underlying motives of the policy. Our analysis shows that the removal of restriction led to a sharp increase in cross-city flow of used vehicles but had no significant impacts on local air quality. Interestingly, our analysis on the new vehicle market points to a prisoner's dilemma among city governments: an unilateral removal of the policy would reduce new vehicle sales in a city but increase new vehicle sales in other cities.The Health Impacts of Coal-Fired Power Plants in India and the Co-benefits of GHG Reductions
Abstract
Under the Paris Agreement, India has pledged that 40% of its electricity generating capacity will come from non-fossil fuel sources by the year 2030; however, this pledge does not limit total coal-fired generating capacity. As of 2019, planned increases in coal-fired capacity totaled 95 GW—46% of installed coal-fired capacity in 2018. In this paper we estimate the CO2 benefits and the health co-benefits of not building these plants. We also estimate the mortality impacts of the 2018 stock of coal-fired power plants and use it to calculate the tax on electricity generation from coal that would internalize these damages.Coal-fired power plants (CPPs) in the planning stages in 2019 would increase India’s CO2 emissions by almost 500 million tons annually assuming they operated at 60% of capacity. The health damages associated with CPPs are substantial: Over 78,000 deaths in India in 2018 were attributable to PM2.5 from CPPs. This figure would rise to over 112,000 deaths if CPPs in the planning stages were also operating. A tax of between Rs. 0.74 and Rs. 0.90 per kWh hour—about 20% of the cost of generating electricity at CPPs—would internalize the premature mortality associated with emissions generated by CPPs in 2018. This would be comparable in magnitude to a tax of $10 per ton of CO2.
Discussant(s)
Marcos Rangel
,
Duke University
Eric Zou
,
University of Oregon and NBER
Arthur A. van Benthem
,
University of Pennsylvania and NBER
Teevrat Garg
,
University of California-San Diego and IZA
JEL Classifications
- Q5 - Environmental Economics
- O1 - Economic Development