IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/enepol/v101y2017icp1-9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Climate-based policies may increase life-cycle social costs of vehicle fleet operation

Author

Listed:
  • Emery, Isaac
  • Mbonimpa, Eric
  • Thal, Alfred E.

Abstract

Sustainability guidelines and regulations in the United States often focus exclusively on carbon or petroleum reductions. Though some of these policies have resulted in substantial progress toward their goals, the effects of these efforts on other social and environmental externalities are often ignored. In this study, we examine the life-cycle air pollutant emissions for alternative fuel and vehicle purchase scenarios at a military installation near a typical urban area in the United States (U.S.). We find that scenarios which minimize petroleum use or greenhouse gas emissions do not concomitantly minimize criteria air pollutant emissions. We also employ social cost methodologies to quantify economic externalities due to climate change and health-related air pollutant impacts. Accounting for the social costs of climate change and air pollution from vehicle use reveals that criteria air pollutants may have a greater total impact than greenhouse gas emissions in locations similar to the urban area examined in this study. Use of first-generation biofuels, particularly corn grain ethanol, may reduce net petroleum use at the cost of increased total health impacts. More comprehensive policies may be needed to ensure that sustainability policies result in a net benefit to society.

Suggested Citation

  • Emery, Isaac & Mbonimpa, Eric & Thal, Alfred E., 2017. "Climate-based policies may increase life-cycle social costs of vehicle fleet operation," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 1-9.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:enepol:v:101:y:2017:i:c:p:1-9
    DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2016.11.018
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516306139
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.enpol.2016.11.018?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Small, K.A. & Kazimi, C., 1994. "On the Costs of Air Pollution from Motor Vehicules," Papers 94-95-3, California Irvine - School of Social Sciences.
    2. Tol, Richard S. J., 2008. "The Social Cost of Carbon: Trends, Outliers and Catastrophes," Economics - The Open-Access, Open-Assessment E-Journal (2007-2020), Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel), vol. 2, pages 1-22.
    3. David McCollum & Volker Krey & Keywan Riahi & Peter Kolp & Arnulf Grubler & Marek Makowski & Nebojsa Nakicenovic, 2013. "Climate policies can help resolve energy security and air pollution challenges," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 119(2), pages 479-494, July.
    4. Robert S. Pindyck, 2013. "Climate Change Policy: What Do the Models Tell Us?," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 51(3), pages 860-872, September.
    5. Brown, Stephen P.A. & Huntington, Hillard G., 2013. "Assessing the U.S. oil security premium," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 118-127.
    6. Troy R. Hawkins & Bhawna Singh & Guillaume Majeau‐Bettez & Anders Hammer Strømman, 2013. "Comparative Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Conventional and Electric Vehicles," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 17(1), pages 53-64, February.
    7. Asdrubali, Francesco & Baldinelli, Giorgio & D’Alessandro, Francesco & Scrucca, Flavio, 2015. "Life cycle assessment of electricity production from renewable energies: Review and results harmonization," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 1113-1122.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Havranek, Tomas & Irsova, Zuzana & Janda, Karel & Zilberman, David, 2015. "Selective reporting and the social cost of carbon," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 394-406.
    2. Ottmar Edenhofer & Susanne Kadner & Christoph von Stechow & Gregor Schwerhoff & Gunnar Luderer, 2014. "Linking climate change mitigation research to sustainable development," Chapters, in: Giles Atkinson & Simon Dietz & Eric Neumayer & Matthew Agarwala (ed.), Handbook of Sustainable Development, chapter 30, pages 476-499, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    3. Peter H. Howard & Thomas Sterner, 2017. "Few and Not So Far Between: A Meta-analysis of Climate Damage Estimates," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 68(1), pages 197-225, September.
    4. Parry, Ian W.H. & Timilsina, Govinda R., 2010. "How should passenger travel in Mexico City be priced?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 68(2), pages 167-182, September.
    5. John Weyant, 2017. "Some Contributions of Integrated Assessment Models of Global Climate Change," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 11(1), pages 115-137.
    6. Auke Hoekstra & Maarten Steinbuch & Geert Verbong, 2017. "Creating Agent-Based Energy Transition Management Models That Can Uncover Profitable Pathways to Climate Change Mitigation," Complexity, Hindawi, vol. 2017, pages 1-23, December.
    7. Cees A. Withagen, 2018. "The Social Cost of Carbon and the Ramsey Rule," CESifo Working Paper Series 7359, CESifo.
    8. William Nordhaus, 2014. "Estimates of the Social Cost of Carbon: Concepts and Results from the DICE-2013R Model and Alternative Approaches," Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 000.
    9. Richard S J Tol, 2018. "The Economic Impacts of Climate Change," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 12(1), pages 4-25.
    10. van den Bergh, J.C.J.M. & Botzen, W.J.W., 2015. "Monetary valuation of the social cost of CO2 emissions: A critical survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 33-46.
    11. McKitrick, Ross & Lee, Jamie, 2017. "Forming a Majority Coalition for Carbon Taxes under a State-Contingent Updating Rule," Strategic Behavior and the Environment, now publishers, vol. 6(4), pages 289-309, November.
    12. Parry, Ian W.H. & Timilsina, Govinda R., 2009. "Pricing externalities from passenger transportation in Mexico city," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5071, The World Bank.
    13. Weyant John, 2014. "Integrated assessment of climate change: state of the literature," Journal of Benefit-Cost Analysis, De Gruyter, vol. 5(3), pages 377-409, December.
    14. Ayoubi, Charles & Thurm, Boris, 2020. "Pro-environmental behavior and morality: An economic model with heterogeneous preferences," OSF Preprints w8afg, Center for Open Science.
    15. de Ridder, Kilian & Schultz, Felix Carl & Pies, Ingo, 2023. "Procedural climate justice: Conceptualizing a polycentric solution to a global problem," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 214(C).
    16. Simon Levin & Anastasios Xepapadeas, 2021. "On the Coevolution of Economic and Ecological Systems," Annual Review of Resource Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 13(1), pages 355-377, October.
    17. Steve Newbold & Charles Griffiths & Christopher C. Moore & Ann Wolverton & Elizabeth Kopits, 2010. "The "Social Cost of Carbon" Made Simple," NCEE Working Paper Series 201007, National Center for Environmental Economics, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, revised Aug 2010.
    18. Melissa Dell & Benjamin F. Jones & Benjamin A. Olken, 2014. "What Do We Learn from the Weather? The New Climate-Economy Literature," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 52(3), pages 740-798, September.
    19. Dietz, Simon & Gollier, Christian & Kessler, Louise, 2018. "The climate beta," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 87(C), pages 258-274.
    20. Ghotge, Rishabh & van Wijk, Ad & Lukszo, Zofia, 2021. "Off-grid solar charging of electric vehicles at long-term parking locations," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).

    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:eee:enepol:v:101:y:2017:i:c:p:1-9. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/enpol .

    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.