Journal
ENERGY POLICY
Volume 44, Issue -, Pages 34-45Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2011.12.055
Keywords
Electricity; Air pollution; Mexico
Funding
- LASPAU
- Swedish Research Council Formas
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In the past two decades, rapid population and economic growth on the U.S.-Mexico border has spurred a dramatic increase in electricity demand. In response, American energy multinationals have built power plants just south of the border that export most of their electricity to the U.S. This development has stirred considerable controversy because these plants effectively skirt U.S. air pollution regulations in a severely degraded international airshed. Yet to our knowledge, this concern has not been subjected to rigorous scrutiny. This paper uses a suite of air dispersion, health impacts, and valuation models to assess the human health damages in the U.S. and Mexico caused by air emissions from two power-exporting plants in Mexicali, Baja California. We find that these emissions have limited but nontrivial health impacts, mostly by exacerbating particulate pollution in the U.S., and we value these damages at more than half a million dollars per year. These findings demonstrate that power-exporting plants can have cross-border health effects and bolster the case for systematically evaluating their environmental impacts. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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