Distributional impacts of carbon capture in the US power sector

Ana Varela Varela, Daniel Shawhan, Christoph Funke, Maya Domeshek, Sally Robson, Steven Witkin, Dallas Burtraw and Burçin Ünel

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: While some see carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) as crucial for cost-effective decarbonization, it faces opposition based on air pollution and equity concerns. To understand this cost–air pollution trade-off, we simulate the potential impacts of allowing CCUS deployment in the US power sector under plausible climate policies. We show that the existence of this trade-off critically depends on the underlying policy, which affects the type of generation CCUS could displace: under a policy that incentivizes coal generation, CCUS might improve health outcomes and reduce costs. When we disaggregate our results, we find that the air pollution (PM2.5) effects of allowing CCUS, positive or negative, are largest for Black and low-income populations. We show that allowing CCUS can yield energy-cost savings, particularly benefiting lower-income communities. Our sensitivity analyses highlight the effects of uncertainties on costs and benefits. Overall, this study contributes to our understanding of broader distributional consequences of allowing CCUS.

Keywords: air pollution; and storage; electric power; energy justice; environmental justice; incidence; utilization; carbon capture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D63 H23 Q20 Q52 Q58 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2024-11-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-reg
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, 1, November, 2024, 11(S1), pp. S157 - S197. ISSN: 2333-5955

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/126047/ Open access version. (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Unavailable (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/126047/ [301 Moved Permanently]--> https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/126047/)

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:ehl:lserod:126047

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().