This paper studies the employment impacts of renewable energy projects in Brazil. Between 2006 and 2017, Brazil's solar capacity grew from 0.001 GW to 1.01 GW, and wind capacity grew from 0.23 GW to 12.4 GW. Using detailed employment information from the universe of formal workers in Brazil, we analyze how the development of renewable energy projects impacts local economies. We find that when new wind energy projects come online, the number of firms in a municipality increases by 14.84 percent and total employment in a municipality increases by 15.95 percent. Employment in occupations related to electricity, construction, and transportation increase by even more. The employment increases appear to stem from growth of existing firms and increased entry of new firms. The findings are mirrored in municipal sales tax revenue and income tax revenue. Our results are not explained by electricity grid expansions or construction of federal roads. Notably, we find larger effects in areas with high shares of informality.

Environmental policies can be ineffective if firms are able to shift production processes from regulated to unregulated sectors. Such incomplete regulation affects the spatial distribution of pollution and can therefore affect who bears the burden of pollution. I study this phenomenon in the context of a policy intended to reduce pollution from mills that process sugarcane in Mexico. In response to the regulation, I show that mills shifted some processing to the fields where sugarcane is grown. Following the policy, sugarcane fields linked to regulated facilities increased fires by 10% which increased PM2.5 exposure by 6%. Pollution increases were unevenly distributed across communities: agricultural fields tend to be located near poorer populations, and therefore the increase in fires increased their pollution burden. My results highlight a previously undiscussed implication of incomplete pollution regulation: its distributional consequences.

The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022 allocated substantial resources to propel the clean energy transition, specifically emphasizing equity for environmental justice communities and low-income households. Although the IRA holds promise for significant emissions reductions, achieving the goal of equitable outcomes is less assured and thus may necessitate active community involvement in research. Environmental economists are uniquely positioned to evaluate the IRA’s impact on environmental justice outcomes, but conventional approaches to economic policy analysis may not sufficiently address the intricacies of this endeavor. This paper examines the role of community-engaged research (CEnR) in environmental economics, evaluates its adoption within the field, and highlights its potential for enhancing research methodologies. CEnR represents an evolution in research practices, encompassing ethical considerations and placing community perspectives at the center of academic analyses. More broadly, it underscores the value of integrating community insights into economic research to ensure that our research is grounded in real-world conditions and that our clean energy policy evaluations reflect the needs, concerns, and interests of the participating communities.

Water diversions for agriculture reduce ecosystem services provided by saline lakes around the world. Exposed lakebed surfaces are major sources of dust emissions and may exacerbate existing environmental inequities. This paper studies the effects of water diversions and their impacts on particulate pollution arising from reduced inflows to the Salton Sea via a spatiallyexplicit particle transport model and changing lakebed exposure. We demonstrate that lakebed dust emissions increased ambient PM10 and PM2.5 concentrations and worsened environmental inequalities, with historically disadvantaged communities receiving a disproportionate increase in pollution. Water diversion decisions are often determined by political processes, and our findings demonstrate the need for analysis of distributional impacts to ensure equitable compensation.

This course is one of the core courses of the Sustainable Energy Ph.D. in the School of Sustainability. This course introduces energy markets, environmental and energy policy, and environmental justice topics from a quantitative perspective. It also provides an introduction to quantitative methods and causal inference methods in R. Finally, it provides tools for energy and environmental policy analysis.