A new journal article from researchers at the Paul H. O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs urges the Environmental Protection Agency to conduct a thorough review of the overall regulatory framework around excess emissions during malfunctions or accidents.
Associate Professor Alex Hollingsworth, Assistant Professor Nikolaos Zirogiannis, and Lynton K. Caldwell Professor David Konisky worked on the research, “Excess Emissions: Environmental Impacts, Health Effects, and Policy Debate,” which was recently published in the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy. The authors argue that a requirement for detailed data reporting, such as the kind that exists in Texas, should apply to all states and would best enable policy makers to design an effective regulatory framework. Currently, most states don’t require polluters to immediately and publicly disclose information about excess emissions in real-time.
“We became aware of the issue of excess emissions in 2016 after seeing a report published by the Environmental Integrity Project,” Zirogiannis said. “We were struck by the magnitude of emissions that were released during malfunctions or accidents, which are the main causes of excess emissions. We decided to spend more time looking into other research articles that had been published on the topic. After surveying the environmental policy and economics literature, we realized that little attention had been paid by researchers to those types of emissions violations. We reached out to multiple states asking for data on excess emissions and discovered that Texas had the single most comprehensive record keeping and reporting practices.”
The researchers collected and analyzed the Texas data and published a series of papers focusing on the incidence, magnitude, and causes of excess emissions, as well as their environmental justice implications and their air quality and health impacts.
“This latest paper in Review of Environmental Economics and Policy summarizes our previous work on excess emissions and provides additional updates around the debate of how those emissions should be handled from a regulatory perspective,” Zirogiannis said.
The findings from Texas alone are stunning. Excess emissions events are frequent—there is at least one a day that releases more than 10 tons of toxic chemicals and at least three events a year that each release upwards of 1,000 tons of pollutions. Excess emissions have a substantial impact on air quality (increasing ozone concentrations) and premature mortality.
“Thirty-five people ages 65 and above die every year in Texas as the result of pollution exposure induced by excess emissions,” Zirogiannis said.
However, outside of Texas, little is known about how often excess emissions occur because most states do not require detailed record keeping or reporting. Although the EPA has recently taken steps to close regulatory loopholes that allow facilities to go unpunished for releasing excess emissions and violating their permits, a more thorough review of regulations is necessary considering the researchers’ findings on the damages caused by such incidents.
Zirogiannis and his colleagues plan to investigate other impacts of excess emissions beyond environmental quality and mortality.
“We are particularly interested in exploring how excess emissions affect learning outcomes among students,” Zirogiannis said. “This work will advance a growing research area in environmental economics connecting pollution exposure to cognitive outcomes.”
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