Air Pollution and Solar Energy: Evidence from Wildfires

Seung Min Kim and Kenneth Gillingham

No 10948, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: There is strong evidence on the mortality and morbidity external costs of air pollution. This paper focuses on another source of air pollution externality: the loss in solar electricity generation from increased atmospheric opacity due to air pollution. We use data from residential rooftop solar panels and exploit quasi-random variation in air opacity from wildfire smoke and wind conditions to estimate that PM2.5 pollution reduced annual solar generation in California by over 450GWh, or 4% of total potential generation. This is equivalent to an annual externality of $177 per ton of PM2.5 emitted. Our findings suggest that there is a positive feedback from decarbonisation policies, where reduced dependence on fossil fuels improves air quality, leading to an even greater productivity of solar generation, further reducing emissions.

Keywords: solar energy; air pollution; equity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q48 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp10948.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ces:ceswps:_10948

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Klaus Wohlrabe ().