IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp10170.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Estimating Indirect Benefits: Fracking, Coal and Air Pollution

Author

Listed:
  • Johnsen, Reid

    (California Department of Tax and Finance Administration)

  • LaRiviere, Jacob

    (University of Tennessee)

  • Wolff, Hendrik

    (Simon Fraser University)

Abstract

This paper estimates indirect benefits of improved air quality induced by hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking". The recent increase in natural gas supply led to displacement of coal-fired electricity by cleaner natural gas-fired generation. Using detailed spatial panel data comprising the near universe of US power plants, we find that coal generation decreased by 28%. Further, fracking decreased local air pollution by an average of 4%. We show that benefits vary geographically; air pollution levels decreased by 35% in the most affected region. Back of the envelope calculations imply accumulated health benefits of roughly $17 billion annually.

Suggested Citation

  • Johnsen, Reid & LaRiviere, Jacob & Wolff, Hendrik, 2016. "Estimating Indirect Benefits: Fracking, Coal and Air Pollution," IZA Discussion Papers 10170, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10170
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp10170.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lucija Muehlenbachs & Elisheba Spiller & Christopher Timmins, 2015. "The Housing Market Impacts of Shale Gas Development," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(12), pages 3633-3659, December.
    2. Natalia Fabra & Mar Reguant, 2014. "Pass-Through of Emissions Costs in Electricity Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(9), pages 2872-2899, September.
    3. Lucas Davis & Catherine Hausman, 2016. "Market Impacts of a Nuclear Power Plant Closure," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 92-122, April.
    4. Hunt Allcott & Daniel Keniston, 2015. "Dutch Disease or Agglomeration? The Local Economic Effects of Natural Resource Booms in Modern America," Working Papers 15-41, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    5. Kenneth Y. Chay & Michael Greenstone, 2005. "Does Air Quality Matter? Evidence from the Housing Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 113(2), pages 376-424, April.
    6. Joshua Graff Zivin & Matthew Neidell, 2013. "Environment, Health, and Human Capital," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(3), pages 689-730, September.
    7. Adam Isen & Maya Rossin-Slater & W. Reed Walker, 2017. "Every Breath You Take—Every Dollar You’ll Make: The Long-Term Consequences of the Clean Air Act of 1970," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(3), pages 848-902.
    8. Olivier Deschenes & Michael Greenstone & Joseph S. Shapiro, 2012. "Defensive Investments and the Demand for Air Quality: Evidence from the NOx Budget Program and Ozone Reductions," NBER Working Papers 18267, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Erin T. Mansur, 2007. "Do Oligopolists Pollute Less? Evidence From A Restructured Electricity Market," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 55(4), pages 661-689, December.
    10. Koster, Hans R.A. & Ommeren, Jos van, 2015. "A shaky business: Natural gas extraction, earthquakes and house prices," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 80(C), pages 120-139.
    11. Gautam Gowrisankaran & Stanley S. Reynolds & Mario Samano, 2016. "Intermittency and the Value of Renewable Energy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 124(4), pages 1187-1234.
    12. Severin Borenstein, 2002. "The Trouble With Electricity Markets: Understanding California's Restructuring Disaster," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 16(1), pages 191-211, Winter.
    13. Christopher R. Knittel & Konstantinos Metaxoglou & Andre Trindade, 2015. "Natural Gas Prices and Coal Displacement: Evidence from Electricity Markets," NBER Working Papers 21627, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    14. Nicholas Z. Muller & Robert Mendelsohn & William Nordhaus, 2011. "Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(5), pages 1649-1675, August.
    15. Janet Currie & Matthew Neidell, 2005. "Air Pollution and Infant Health: What Can We Learn from California's Recent Experience?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 120(3), pages 1003-1030.
    16. Catherine D. Wolfram, 1999. "Measuring Duopoly Power in the British Electricity Spot Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 805-826, September.
    17. Wolfram Schlenker & W. Reed Walker, 2016. "Airports, Air Pollution, and Contemporaneous Health," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 83(2), pages 768-809.
    18. Hans R.A. Koster & Jos N. van Ommeren, 2015. "Natural Gas Extraction, Earthquakes and House Prices," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 15-038/VIII, Tinbergen Institute.
    19. Linn, Joshua & Anna Muehlenbachs, Lucija & Wang, Yshuang, 2014. "How Do Natural Gas Prices Affect Electricity Consumers and the Environment?," RFF Working Paper Series dp-14-19, Resources for the Future.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hill, Elaine L., 2018. "Shale gas development and infant health: Evidence from Pennsylvania," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 61(C), pages 134-150.
    2. Ben Gilbert & Gavin Roberts, 2018. "Supply-side links in oil and gas markets," Working Papers 2018-04, Colorado School of Mines, Division of Economics and Business.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lichter, Andreas & Pestel, Nico & Sommer, Eric, 2017. "Productivity effects of air pollution: Evidence from professional soccer," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 54-66.
    2. Alastair Ball, 2018. "The Long-Term Economic Costs of the Great London Smog," Birkbeck Working Papers in Economics and Finance 1814, Birkbeck, Department of Economics, Mathematics & Statistics.
    3. Jason Brown & Colton Tousey, 2020. "Death of Coal and Breath of Life: The Effect of Power Plant Closure on Local Air Quality," Research Working Paper RWP 20-15, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
    4. Austin M. Williams & Daniel J. Phaneuf, 2019. "The Morbidity Costs of Air Pollution: Evidence from Spending on Chronic Respiratory Conditions," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 74(2), pages 571-603, October.
    5. Ball, Alastair, 2014. "Air pollution, foetal mortality, and long-term health: Evidence from the Great London Smog," MPRA Paper 63229, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised 25 Mar 2015.
    6. Joseph S. Shapiro & Reed Walker, 2018. "Why Is Pollution from US Manufacturing Declining? The Roles of Environmental Regulation, Productivity, and Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(12), pages 3814-3854, December.
    7. Steve Gibbons & Stephan Heblich & Esther Lho & Christopher Timmins, 2016. "Fear of Fracking? The Impact of the Shale Gas Exploration on House Prices in Britain," SERC Discussion Papers 0207, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    8. Hill, Elaine L. & Ma, Lala, 2022. "Drinking water, fracking, and infant health," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    9. Divya Sadana, 2020. "Effects of Early Childhood Exposure to Pollution on Crime: Evidence from 1970 Clean Air Act," 2020 Papers psa1864, Job Market Papers.
    10. Götz, Martin, 2018. "Financial constraints and corporate environmental responsibility," SAFE Working Paper Series 241, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE.
    11. Divya Sadana, 2023. "Effects of Early Childhood Exposure to Pollution on Crime: Evidence from 1970 Clean Air Act," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 84(1), pages 279-312, January.
    12. Joshua Graff Zivin & Matthew Neidell, 2013. "Environment, Health, and Human Capital," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(3), pages 689-730, September.
    13. Gibbons, Stephen & Heblich, Stephan & Timmins, Christopher, 2021. "Market tremors: Shale gas exploration, earthquakes, and their impact on house prices," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C).
    14. Giaccherini, Matilde & Kopinska, Joanna & Palma, Alessandro, 2021. "When particulate matter strikes cities: Social disparities and health costs of air pollution," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    15. Alessandro Palma & Inna Petrunyk & Daniela Vuri, 2022. "Prenatal air pollution exposure and neonatal health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(5), pages 729-759, May.
    16. Colmer, Jonathan & Lin, Dajun & Liu, Siying & Shimshack, Jay, 2021. "Why are pollution damages lower in developed countries? Insights from high-Income, high-particulate matter Hong Kong," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C).
    17. Prashant Bharadwaj & Matthew Gibson & Joshua Graff Zivin & Christopher Neilson, 2017. "Gray Matters: Fetal Pollution Exposure and Human Capital Formation," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 4(2), pages 505-542.
    18. Xiaojing Jia & Xin Luo, 2023. "Residents’ Health Effect of Environmental Regulations in Coal-Dependent Industries: Empirical Evidence from China’s Cement Industry," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(3), pages 1-16, January.
    19. Joseph S. Shapiro & Reed Walker, 2015. "Why is Pollution from U.S. Manufacturing Declining" The Roles of Trade, Regulation, Productivity, and Preferences," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1982R, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University, revised Sep 2016.
    20. Ross Levine & Chen Lin & Zigan Wang, 2018. "Pollution and Human Capital Migration: Evidence from Corporate Executives," NBER Working Papers 24389, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    fracking; coal-fired power plants; air pollution; health; electricity;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • Q41 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Energy - - - Demand and Supply; Prices
    • Q53 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Environmental Economics - - - Air Pollution; Water Pollution; Noise; Hazardous Waste; Solid Waste; Recycling
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10170. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.