Jobs Versus the Environment: An Industry-level Perspective

The possibility that workers could be adversely affected by environmental policies imposed on heavily regulated industries has led to claims of a "jobs versus the environment" trade-off by both business and labor leaders. The present research examines this claim at the industry level for four heavily polluting industries: pulp and paper mills, plastic manufacturers, petroleum refiners, and iron and steel mills. By focusing on labor effects across an entire industry, we construct a measure relevant to the concerns of key stakeholders, such as labor unions and trade groups. We decompose the link between environmental regulation and employment into three distinct components: factor shifts to more or less labor intensity, changes in total expenditures, and changes in the quantity of output demanded. We use detailed plant-level data to estimate the key parameters describing factor shifts and changes in total expenditures. We then use aggregate time-series data on industry supply shocks and output responses to estimate the demand effect. We find that increased environmental spending generally does not cause a significant change in industry-level employment. Our average across all four industries is a net gain of 1.5 jobs per $1 million in additional environmental spending, with a standard error of 2.2 jobs—an insignificant effect. In the plastics and petroleum sectors, however, there are small but significantly positive effects: 6.9 and 2.2 jobs, respectively, per$1 million in additional expenditures. These effects can be linked to favorable factor shifts—environmental spending is more labor intensive than ordinary production—and relatively inelastic estimated demand.

The Cost of Environmental Protection

Expenditures for environmental protection in the U.S. are estimated to exceed $150 billion annually or about 2$1.50 to $12. This paper explores the relationship between reported expenditures and economic cost in the manufacturing sector in the context of a large plant-level data set at the four-digit SIC level. We use a cost function modeling approach which treats both environmental and non-environmental production activities as distinct, unrelated cost minimization problems for each plant. We then explore the possibility that these activities are, in fact, related by including reported regulatory expenditures in the cost function for non-environmental output. Under the null hypothesis that reported regulatory expenditures accurately measure the cost of regulation, the coefficient on this term should be zero. In ten of eleven industries studied, including all of the heavily regulated industries, this null hypothesis is accepted using our preferred fixed-effects model. Our best estimate, based on an expenditure weighted average of the four most heavily regulated industries, indicates that an incremental dollar of reported environmental expenditure reduces non-environmental production costs by eighteen cents with a standard error of forty-two cents. This is equivalent to saying that total costs rise by eighty-two cents for every dollar increase in reported environmental expenditures. Using an alternative pooled model we find uniformly higher estimates. Although consistent with previous results, we believe these higher estimates are biased by omitted variables characterizing differences among plants. Summarizing, our results enable us to reject claims that environmental spending imposes large hidden costs on manufacturing plants. In fact, our best estimate indicates a modest though statistically insignificant overstatement of regulatory costs.

Impact of Carbon Price Policies on U.S. Industry

This paper informs the discussion of carbon price policies by examining the potential for adverse impacts on domestic industries, with a focus on detailed sector-level analysis. The assumed policy scenario involves a unilateral economy-wide $10/ton CO2 charge without accompanying border tax adjustments or other complementary policies. Four modeling approaches are developed as a proxy for the different time horizons over which firms can pass through added costs, change input mix, adopt new technologies, and reallocate capital. Overall, we find that a readily identifiable set of industries experience particularly adverse impacts as measured by reduced output and that the relative burdens on different industries are remarkably consistent across the four time horizons. Output rebounds considerably over longer time horizons, and the adverse impacts on profits diminish even more rapidly in most cases. Over the short term employment losses mirror output declines, while gains in other industries fully offset the losses over the longer horizons. At the same time, leakage abroad is considerable in some sectors, particularly when reductions in exports are considered.carbon price, competitiveness, input-output analysis

Evaluating Voluntary Climate Programs in the United States

Despite serving as the principal basis of U.S. climate policy over the past two decades, corporate voluntary environmental programs have been subject to quite limited evaluation. The self-selection of participants—an essential element of such initiatives—poses particular challenges to researchers because the decision to participate may not be random and, in fact, may be correlated with the outcomes. The present study is designed to overcome these problems by gauging the environmental effectiveness of two early voluntary climate change programs with established track records, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Wise program and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Voluntary Reporting of Greenhouse Gases Program, or 1605(b). Both programs provide quite flexible criteria for firms to participate. Particular attention is paid to the participation decision and how various assumptions affect estimates of program outcomes using propensity score matching methods applied to plant-level Census data. Overall, we find quite modest effects: the reductions in fuel and electricity expenditures from Climate Wise and 1605(b) are no more than 10 percent and probably less than 5 percent. Virtually no evidence suggests a statistically significant effect of either Climate Wise or 1605(b) on fuel costs. Some evidence indicates that participation in Climate Wise led to a slight (3–5 percent) increase in electricity costs that vanished after two years. Stronger evidence suggests that participation in 1605(b) led to a slight (4–8 percent) decrease in electricity costs that persisted for at least three years.voluntary, regulation, energy, climate change

The Near-Term Impacts of Carbon Mitigation Policies on Manufacturing Industries

Who will pay for new policies to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions in the United States? This paper considers a slice of the question by examining the near-term impact on domestic manufacturing industries of both upstream (economy-wide) and downstream (electric power industry only) carbon mitigation policies. Detailed Census data on the electricity use of four-digit manufacturing industries is combined with input-output information on interindustry purchases to paint a detailed picture of carbon use, including effects on final demand. This approach, which freezes capital and other inputs at current levels and assumes that all costs are passed forward, yields upper-bound estimates of total costs. The results are best viewed as descriptive of the relative burdens within the manufacturing sector rather than as a measure of absolute costs. Overall, the principal conclusion is that within the manufacturing sector (which by definition excludes coal production and electricity generation), only a small number of industries would bear a disproportionate short-term burden of a carbon tax or similar policy. Not surprisingly, an electricity-only policy affects very different manufacturing industries than an economy-wide carbon tax.distribution of carbon mitigation costs, industrial impacts of carbon policies

Further studies of the catalytic oxidation of ortho-xylene to phthalic anhydride using a fluidized bed reactor.

This investigation was conducted to further study the vapor-phase oxidation or o-xylene to phthalic anhydride in a fluidized bed catalytic reactor. Parameters investigated during the study were temperature, catalyst volume, and catalyst activated by use or different promoters. Two different vanadium pentoxide catalysts were used. One was a new catalyst(Catalyst I) supported on a silica base and diluted with potassium sulfate. The other catalyst(Catalyst II) was similar to the first one except that it had been used in a commercial fixed bed reactor operated by the Monsanto Company, St. Louis, Missouri, using naphthalene as a reed material. It had been suggested that this second catalyst would be activated whereas the fresh catalyst would not am the used catalyst would thus give higher yield or phthalic anhydride. Little difference in yield or phthalic anhydride was found, the used catalyst giving slightly lower yields. These studies were conducted on a laboratory scale in equipment similar to that used in earlier studies by Wang(12) but modified in several respects. Phthalic anhydride, maleic anhydride, o-toluic aldehyde, carbon dioxide and water were obtained as oxidation products. Except water, they are all determined by quantitative analysis. Two different amounts of Catalyst I (24 grams and 102 grams) were used at five different temperatures C320,400,450,490,520⁰C) to study the effect on the yield per cent or phthalic anhydride. It was found that the optimum reaction temperature is at 490⁰C when using either amount of catalyst. The highest yields of phthalic anhydride obtained were 21.5 per cent when using 24 grams of Catalyst I and 24.3 per cent when using 102 grams. The highest yield of phthalic anhydride was 19.6 per cent when 137 grams of Catalyst II were used at 490⁰C and the lowest yield was 9.6 per cent at 320⁰C. The effect of the addition of bromine, phenol bromide, and 1-3 dibromo-propane, as promoters, was also investigated. These promoters were introduced into the liquid o-xylene feed in separate tests. It was again found from a number of tests at different reactor temperatures that 490⁰C gave the highest yield of phthalic anhydride, 36.2 per cent. This yield was obtained using 5 per cent by volume of liquid bromine in the feed and 102 grams of Catalyst I --Abstract, pages ii-iii

Atomtronics with a spin: statistics of spin transport and non-equilibrium orthogonality catastrophe in cold quantum gases

We propose to investigate the full counting statistics of nonequilibrium spin transport with an ultracold atomic quantum gas. The setup makes use of the spin control available in atomic systems to generate spin transport induced by an impurity atom immersed in a spin-imbalanced two-component Fermi gas. In contrast to solid-state realizations, in ultracold atoms spin relaxation and the decoherence from external sources is largely suppressed. As a consequence, once the spin current is turned off by manipulating the internal spin degrees of freedom of the Fermi system, the nonequilibrium spin population remains constant. Thus one can directly count the number of spins in each reservoir to investigate the full counting statistics of spin flips, which is notoriously challenging in solid state devices. Moreover, using Ramsey interferometry, the dynamical impurity response can be measured. Since the impurity interacts with a many-body environment that is out of equilibrium, our setup provides a way to realize the non-equilibrium orthogonality catastrophe. Here, even for spin reservoirs initially prepared in a zero-temperature state, the Ramsey response exhibits an exponential decay, which is in contrast to the conventional power-law decay of Anderson's orthogonality catastrophe. By mapping our system to a multi-step Fermi sea, we are able to derive analytical expressions for the impurity response at late times. This allows us to reveal an intimate connection of the decay rate of the Ramsey contrast and the full counting statistics of spin flips.Comment: 9+11 pages, 10 figure