Environmental and Health Impacts of Energy Regulations
Event details
| Date | 11.01.2018 |
| Hour | 15:00 |
| Speaker | Dr. Christine Choirat from the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health |
| Location | |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
Abstract
Air pollution, in particular fine particulate matter (PM2.5), is associated with harmful health effects, even at levels below the current standards and even for short-time exposures. Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is a major precursor of PM2.5. It is estimated that in the US about 2/3 of all SO2 come from electric power generation that relies on burning fossil fuels, like coal.
The 1990 Acid Rain Program set a goal of reducing annual SO2 by 10 million tons (below 1980 levels). It specified a market-based cap-and-trade system of SO2 allowances for fossil fuel-fired power plants: if plant emissions exceeded distributed allotment, allowances could be purchased from other plants. Besides allowances, plants could install pollution controls, change fuel, or reduce production.
Power plant emissions spread and potentially impact populations throughout the country. In this talk, we will show how we use data science tools at scale to study the whole chain of accountability: intervention, emissions, ambient air quality, and health outcomes, leveraging knowledge from atmospheric chemistry to model long-range pollution transport.
Biography
Christine Choirat is a research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. Christine was trained as a statistician (PhD 2003, Paris Dauphine). Her research leverages data science and high-performance computing to study environmental and health policy, with a particular interest for the impacts of energy production. https://scholar.harvard.edu/cchoirat/biocv
Recent published works include The New England Journal of Medicine, Epidemiology, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Journal of the American Medical Association.
Air pollution, in particular fine particulate matter (PM2.5), is associated with harmful health effects, even at levels below the current standards and even for short-time exposures. Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is a major precursor of PM2.5. It is estimated that in the US about 2/3 of all SO2 come from electric power generation that relies on burning fossil fuels, like coal.
The 1990 Acid Rain Program set a goal of reducing annual SO2 by 10 million tons (below 1980 levels). It specified a market-based cap-and-trade system of SO2 allowances for fossil fuel-fired power plants: if plant emissions exceeded distributed allotment, allowances could be purchased from other plants. Besides allowances, plants could install pollution controls, change fuel, or reduce production.
Power plant emissions spread and potentially impact populations throughout the country. In this talk, we will show how we use data science tools at scale to study the whole chain of accountability: intervention, emissions, ambient air quality, and health outcomes, leveraging knowledge from atmospheric chemistry to model long-range pollution transport.
Biography
Christine Choirat is a research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science. Christine was trained as a statistician (PhD 2003, Paris Dauphine). Her research leverages data science and high-performance computing to study environmental and health policy, with a particular interest for the impacts of energy production. https://scholar.harvard.edu/cchoirat/biocv
Recent published works include The New England Journal of Medicine, Epidemiology, Annals of Internal Medicine, and Journal of the American Medical Association.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
- This event is internal
Organizer
- Dr. Olivier Versheure, Swiss Data Science Center