Do environmental markets cause environmental injustice? Evidence from California’s carbon market

Hernandez-Cortes, Danae; Meng, Kyle C.

doi:10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104786

Cited by 28 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 54 publications

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“…At first glance, these findings may appear to contradict those of a study by two researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara that concluded that pollution exposure gaps between EJ communities and others narrowed as a result of the state's cap‐and‐trade program. [ 50 , 51 ] The study excluded refineries and electric power plants from the analysis, despite the fact that these accounted for three‐quarters of the emissions regulated under the program, on the grounds that these sectors could have been impacted by other regulatory measures (such as renewable portfolio standards for electricity producers), but other regulatory measures typically are part of the setting within which carbon pricing programs are introduced, as noted above. Moreover, these measures would have contributed to lower emissions, not the opposite; that is, the increases reported in Table 2 occurred despite other policies, not because of them.…”

Section: Principle #2: Protect the Air: An Ej Mandate For Emissions O...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Justice and Carbon Pricing: Can They Be Reconciled?

Boyce

Ash

Ranalli³

2023

Global Challenges

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202200204clean energy). As may be expected, powerful opposition to carbon pricing has come from the fossil fuel lobby, which has sought to block legislation or, failing that, to weaken it. [1,2] More surprisingly, perhaps, opposition also has come from environmental justice (EJ) advocates. The central goal in EJ is to combat disproportionate environmental harms imposed upon people of color and low-income communities. Many EJ advocates fear that carbon pricing could exacerbate pollution exposure disparities. This paper focuses on the objections to carbon pricing raised by EJ advocates.In brief, critics have argued that carbon pricing (i) fails to reduce carbon emissions significantly, (ii) fails to reduce the disproportionate impacts of hazardous co-pollutants on people of color and low-income communities, (iii) harms the purchasing power of low-income households, and (iv) commodifies nature. [3,4] Proponents of carbon pricing often, and in our view hastily, have dismissed these criticisms as baseless.Here, we chart a middle path between dismissal of carbon pricing and dismissal of its critics. The foundation for our position is a basic ethical principle: we believe that the gifts of Nature should be shared in equal measure by all. These gifts include the right to a clean and safe environment-a right recognized in many national constitutions, the most fundamental of legal documents, worldwide [5] -and the right to share in revenue that is generated by limiting the use of scarce resources. From this perspective, we have a moral imperative both to eliminate the disparate pollution burdens that poison the air and water of overburdened communities and to halt destabilization of the Earth's climate to protect future generations as well as vulnerable present-day populations.Halting the disparate pollution imposed on EJ communities requires, first and foremost, that we take seriously the extent of the problem and recognize the complicity of government policies together with market forces in creating and perpetuating environmental injustice. Solutions require rectifying systemic failures of both the market and the state. EJ and climate stabilization are complementary goals-indeed, climate change itself exacerbates environmental injustice-but we argue here that advancing both goals together requires that explicit EJ provisions be built into the design of climate policy. At a bare minimum, climate policy should guarantee that existing pollution disparities are not exacerbated. Going further, welldesigned design policies can advance the more ambitious goal of reducing environmental disparities.Halting climate destabilization requires, above all, that we keep fossil fuels in the ground. Carbon dioxide emissions from Carbon pricing has been criticized by environmental justice advocates on the grounds that it fails to reduce emissions significantly, fails to reduce the disproportionate impacts of hazardous co-pollutants on people of color and low-income communities, hits low-income households harder than wealthier households, a...

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Section: Principle #2: Protect the Air: An Ej Mandate For Emissions O...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental Justice and Carbon Pricing: Can They Be Reconciled?

Boyce

Ash

Ranalli³

2023

Global Challenges

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“…Since the implementation of the Clean Air Act of 1970, environmental justice (EJ) has been a focus of attention not only for policy-makers but also for industry representatives and the general public (Ikeme 2003, Ringquist 2005, Mohai et al 2009, Banzhaf et al 2019. In recent studies, there has been growing public concern about the effect of the spatial reallocation of local pollutants caused by ETSs on EJ (Anderson et al 2018, Cushing et al 2018, Grainger and Ruangmas 2018, Mansur and Sheriff 2021, Hernandez-Cortes and Meng 2023, particularly since Fowlie et al (2012). This appears to be critical for large countries, particularly developing countries such as China, with a significant development gap.…”

Section: Spatial Distributionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The joint impact of the carbon market on carbon emissions, energy mix, and copollutants

Zheng

Tan

Zhang

2023

Environ. Res. Lett.

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From a comprehensive standpoint, this paper investigates whether and to what extent the carbon market functions in the context of the developing world. Taking advantage of a unique seven-year-plant-level panel dataset (2010-2016) on Chinese power plants, we use a matched difference-in-differences strategy to identify the joint impact of China's carbon emissions trading (CET) pilot policy on carbon emissions reduction (objective), energy mix improvement (mechanism), and air copollutant reduction (cobenefits). We find that China's CET pilot policy effectively lowered carbon emissions by approximately 38.61%. Further analysis shows that plants reduce carbon emissions primarily by reducing coal consumption (approximately 30.79%). Most importantly, China's CET pilot policy induces substantial air copollutant abatement benefits by reducing sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides by approximately 52.19% and 48.62%, respectively. State-owned plants are more affected by China's CET pilot policy, and the policy effects show disproportionate environmental inequality. Furthermore, the effects are not affected by the rate-based allowance allocation structure that is adopted by China's national carbon market.

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“…The three different SD strategies (i.e., economic choice, political choice, and social choice) have the potential to both reform and transform existing systems. For example, some economic choice strategies have improved environmental performance and reduced environmental justice concerns [ 25 ]; however, success depends on the regional and local context. If an energy system does not align with the sustainability principles, then the SD strategies need to be incorporated by energy practitioners into the energy system (or perhaps adjusted if they have already been incorporated but insufficient progress has been made).…”

Section: Key Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Illuminating practitioner challenges in energy transitions

Benson,

Boda,

Das

et al. 2023

Heliyon

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Do environmental markets cause environmental injustice? Evidence from California’s carbon market

Cited by 28 publications

References 54 publications

Environmental Justice and Carbon Pricing: Can They Be Reconciled?

Environmental Justice and Carbon Pricing: Can They Be Reconciled?

The joint impact of the carbon market on carbon emissions, energy mix, and copollutants

Illuminating practitioner challenges in energy transitions

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