Coal emissions cross borders
A JAERE-linked study shared by AereOrg shows coal-plant emissions can travel quickly across political borders, undercutting the idea that pollution is solely a local problem and complicating environmental-justice claims for impacted New England communities. (x.com/AereOrg/status/2037499987408347540)
John Morehouse and Edward Rubin’s paper "Downwind and Out" was accepted at the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists (DOI 10.1086/740146) and the authors posted replication materials to GitHub and Harvard Dataverse. (edrub.in)) Using the NOAA HYSPLIT particle‑trajectory model, the authors report that within six hours 50% of coal‑plant NOx/SO2 emissions leave their source states and 99% leave their source counties. (thecgo.org)) The paper documents strategic siting: 55–64% of coal plants were located to reduce within‑county or within‑state downwind exposure, a pattern the authors show does not appear for natural‑gas plants. (thecgo.org)) Their spatial accounting finds 92–98% of county‑level coal emissions originate in other counties and 65–85% of state‑level emissions originate in other states, with over 95% of particulate matter leaving source counties within six hours and 50–85% leaving source states within 12 hours. (thecgo.org)) The authors note strategic siting persisted despite the Clean Air Act’s aims and conclude that federal coordination and transport‑focused regulation are necessary to prevent local governments or firms from exporting pollution. (thecgo.org)) The publicly available plant‑level data and HYSPLIT outputs in the paper’s replication package enable localized mapping of downwind exposure for multistate regions such as New England, supporting targeted analyses for affected Vermont communities and state regulators. (github.com))
