Browsing by Subject "Environmental policy"
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Item Does Community Air Monitoring Lead to Better Environmental Policy? Evaluating AB 617 in Richmond, California(2024-05-01) Hunt, SamanthaCommunity air monitoring, publicly-operated low-cost air monitors to gather local, real-time pollution data, is one method to potentially improve air quality. Regulatory agencies are increasingly funding community monitoring to complement sparse networks of regulatory monitors. However, data from low-cost monitors often faces challenges about data quality, contributing to monitoring data seldom leading to policy change. If community air monitoring is truly an avenue for improving air quality rather than increasing awareness, I argue this data must drive regulatory change. In California, Assembly Bill (AB) 617 created a comprehensive program of public involvement in designing plans to install additional air monitors and subsequently reduce emissions. Here, I analyze key AB 617 documents from Richmond, California to trace whether new air monitoring data is linked to strategies to reduce emissions. I find most monitoring data is not used and rarely connected to regulatory change. I also classify the types of actions within Richmond’s emissions reduction plan, finding relatively few new policies that are enforceable and ready for near-term implementation. Since community monitoring data is largely unused, changes in environmental regulation may be more likely if new regulatory monitors are installed instead. Regulators should also make it clear to community members from the outset that low-cost monitoring data will not lead to new regulation at this point. An alternative, potentially more effective method to improving air quality may be using new monitoring data to pursue change through media advocacy and direct pressure on industry rather than going through state institutions.Item Economics of air pollution: policy, mortality concentration-response, and increasing marginal benefits of abatement(2014-12) Goodkind, Andrew LloydThis dissertation examines the economics of air pollution in three essays. The first two essays consider the implications of the possibility of increasing marginal benefits to pollution abatement. The third essay integrates a new model of air dispersion with an economic model to estimate the marginal damage caused by criteria pollutants in the United States. In the first essay, the optimal abatement policy is derived for a scenario with increasing marginal benefits of abatement and uncertainty in the marginal cost of abatement. Pollution taxes are preferred over quantity restrictions when marginal benefits are increasing in abatement. The second essay uses simulations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) dispersion and compares optimal source-specific pollution control policies with pollution concentration standards and uniform pollution taxes. Optimal policies for PM2.5 regulation yield substantial advantages over uniform policies that do not discriminate based on the location of emissions. The simulations also consider the shape of the concentration-response (C-R) relationship between PM2.5 pollution and mortality. With a log-log C-R, where marginal benefits of PM2.5 abatement are increasing, society should prefer fewer emissions and lower PM2.5 concentrations than if the C-R is log-linear, where marginal benefits of abatement are decreasing.The third essay estimates the marginal damages of criteria pollutant emissions for hundreds of the most heavily polluting sources in the U.S. Marginal damages vary substantially depending on the location of the emission source. The calculation of marginal damages is highly dependent on the choice of air dispersion modeling, the C-R relationship, and the value assigned to mortality caused by environmental risks.