Secondary pollution in energy production: The case of ozone and the NOx Budget Program (RPA Pilot / Seed Project)

Economists have long modeled policies to reduce pollution under the assumption that reducing pollution necessarily reduces damages. Atmospheric chemists have modeled the formation of ground-level ozone, a harmful air pollutant, as a complicated process, in which under some circumstances, reducing nitrogen oxide (NOx) pollution, might have the opposite effect: an increase in ozone concentration. The proposed funding will allow us to: (1) evaluate the NOx Budget Program, a major program that reduced NOx emissions from electricity generators in the eastern US, (2) test for disproportionate burdens of the NOx budget program by socioeconomic status, (3) provide policy recommendations for policies that target ground-level ozone concentrations, and (4) prepare an external proposal to obtain data on health outcomes associated with changes in ozone concentrations.