From how EV policies spur technology development to the role of national air quality standards in improving life expectancy and how better weather forecasts help rural farmers adapt to climate change, EPIC faculty in 2024 shed new light on some of the most crucial topics in energy and climate. Oftentimes, these insights are best illustrated through data presented in easy-to-digest charts. Here are ten of our favorites from 2024.
#1 – To Meet the 2°C Target, Most Global Emissions Cuts Need to Come from Developing Countries
Despite global efforts to reduce emissions, significant challenges remain in balancing equity and climate targets. Projected emissions reveal a stark disparity between OECD and non-OECD countries. Historically, OECD countries—which make up only 17% of the population—have accounted for about 56% of emissions. But that trend is reversing. By 2100, its projected non-OECD countries will make up 85% of emissions. Even if OECD countries achieve carbon neutrality, non-OECD countries would need to cut their end-of-century CO2 emissions by 85.7% to limit global warming to 2°C. This illustrates the cruelty of climate arithmetic. Restraining climate change to the temperature increases recommended by scientists requires most emissions reductions to come from today’s poorer countries. These countries are most in need of higher energy consumption (and least willing to pay extra for low carbon energy sources), account for the great majority of the world’s population, and have emitted the least to date.
#2 – Loss of Bats Led to Increased Pesticide Use, More Infant Deaths
Bats are considered a natural pesticide, relied on by farmers as an alternative to chemical pesticides—that have been linked to negative health impacts—to protect their crops from insects. But many bat populations are collapsing due to an invasive fungus that causes White-Nose Syndrome. Harris Public Policy’s Eyal Frank uses the sudden collapse of bats to explore whether farmers turned to chemical pesticides, and whether doing so impacts human health. He found that when the bat populations declined, farmers increased their use of pesticides by about 31 percent. He also found that with this switch to pesticides, the infant mortality rate rose by almost 8 percent—corresponding to an additional 1,334 infant deaths. Or, for every 1 percent increase in pesticides, there was a 0.25 percent increase in the infant mortality rate.
#3 – With More Policies Encouraging Consumers to Buy EVs Came a Threefold Increase in New EV Technology Patents
Many countries have set ambitious EV adoption goals as they work to reduce carbon emissions—including the United States and China, targeting 50% and 40% of total vehicle sales to be EVs by 2030, respectively. To achieve these objectives, governments have implemented purchase incentives. Harris Public Policy’s Hyuk-soo Kwon found a global shift toward supporting EVs, as the share of EV-specific industrial policies rose from almost none in 2008 to about 50% by 2022. Concurrently, automakers began shifting their innovation efforts. There was a threefold increase in EV-related inventions compared to those for gasoline vehicles over the past decade. A significant increase in EV-targeted policies over five years led to a 4% rise in EV patent applications. This shows that policies can influence the trajectory of innovation.
#4 – Anticipating the End of Oil Leads Most Producers to Make Cuts
The rise of EVs and more stringent climate policies has made it plausible that oil demand could fall to at least near zero by the end of the century. If oil producers were to anticipate such a decline, many think they will quickly move to extract as much as they can. But Harris Public Policy’s Ryan Kellogg found the opposite. Producers make fewer long-term investments, and over time they produce 4.8 percent less than they would have if they had not anticipated the decline. OPEC+ and non-OPEC producers reduce their investments the most because their extraction involves investments with long time horizons. The core OPEC members instead increase their investments because their low costs and high reserve valuations induce them to extract before demand falls too far. Shale producers tend not to respond to anticipated demand changes because their investments have short time horizons.
#5 – Better Weather Forecasts Can Help Farmers Adapt to Climate Change
Climate change is making weather more variable, a problem for much of the world’s poor who depend on agriculture for survival. But accurate long-range weather forecasts have the potential to help. EPIC Scholars Fiona Burlig and Amir Jina, along with UChicago colleagues, found that when farmers are given monsoon forecasts they change their behaviors—often for the better. If the forecast brought “bad news” of a shorter-than-expected growing season, the farmers cultivated less land, reduced their farm expenditure, and engaged in more off-farm business. If the forecast brought “good news” of a longer-than-expected growing season, farmers increased their cultivated land, invested more on the farm, and saw positive net savings. On average, forecast farmers experienced a meaningful increase in household food consumption and well-being. But those who had insurance instead of forecasts increased their agriculture spending substantially without knowing until it was too late whether these investments would pay off.
#6 – When Countries Enforce and Meet their National Air Quality Standards, Life Expectancy Improves
National pollution standards help reduce pollution. Yet, a third of the world’s population lives in regions that don’t meet their country’s own standards. If those countries did meet their own benchmarks, those 2.5 billion people would live an average of 1.2 years longer, according to an Air Quality Life Index analysis. History has proven the power of policy efforts to reduce pollution. For example, the United States and Europe have strong clean air policies, and pollution has dropped 67 percent and 30 percent, respectively, since those policies went into effect. China is another example. After declaring a “war against pollution” in 2013, the country now meets its national standard of 35 µg/m³ and residents are living 2 years longer because of the policy changes that led to a 41 percent reduction in pollution.
#7 – Larger Villages See Greater Benefits from Electrification than Smaller Villages
It is widely believed that electricity access and economic growth go hand-in-hand. As such, developing countries have made large investments in efforts to expand their grid to rural, poor communities. Harris Public Policy’s Fiona Burlig and her co-author test this basic connection between energy and growth in the context of India’s massive national rural electrification program, RGGVY. They found that India’s effort succeeded in significantly increasing electrification to villages. But whether it made an economic impact depended on the size of the village. The benefits received from electrification in larger communities did indeed outweigh the costs of electrifying the village. In fact, the 2,000-person villages saw a 33 percent return on investment. This suggests that electrification was more effective at creating new income-generating opportunities in larger communities. There was zero rate of return from electrification over 20 years in the 300-person villages.
#8 – When Vultures—‘Nature’s Sanitation Service’—Became Nearly Extinct, Human Deaths Rose
Vultures are highly-efficient scavengers, playing an important sanitation role in society. Farmers have long relied on them to remove the rotting bodies of dead livestock that can contaminate waters and increase rabies-laden feral dogs. When vultures in India came close to extinction in the mid-1990s after an anti-inflammatory drug (diclofenac) used to treat cattle poisoned and killed the birds, Harris Public Policy’s Eyal Frank and EPIC Non-Resident Scholar Anant Sudarshan studied the impact on human health. They found that just after the anti-inflammatory drug sales rose and the vulture population collapsed, the human death rate increased by more than 4 percent in the areas where the birds once prospered. This meant that between 2000 and 2005 the loss of vultures caused about 100,000 additional human deaths each year, resulting in damages valued at $69.4 billion.
#9 – Some Grids Won’t Meet the Power Demands of AI Datacenters
The surge in demand for AI-driven computing has fueled investments in large data centers that require a lot of power, placing significant pressure on power grids. University of Chicago Computer Scientist Andrew A Chien and his colleagues assessed how relaxing the amount of power new data centers were guaranteed could increase the power available to them, even if that power wasn’t reliably there 100% of the time. Specifically, they study two datacenter hotspots: Ireland served by EirGrid and Northern Virginia served by Dominion Energy. While EirGrid was able to meet the needs of datacenters with an 80% guarantee of reliability, Dominion was not. Even if Dominion guarantees zero reliability to the datacenters, the grid is projected to meet only 74% of projected demand. This shows that drastic reductions in reliability alone are insufficient to meet projected AI demand supported by data centers in some regions.
#10 – Americans Don’t Want Chinese EVs, even if they’re Cheaper
Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on very much when it comes to energy policy. One thing they do have in common is that neither party wants Chinese EVs on the road in the United States. Leaders from both parties have suggested inexpensive Chinese EVs could undermine U.S. auto industry competitiveness and suggested high tariffs as a response. But a poll from EPIC and the Associated Press–NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed most Americans aren’t interested in buying Chinese EVs, despite their cheaper price. When told the Chinese version would be $500, $1,000, $2,000 or even $5,000 cheaper than the American-made car, the majority still said they would pay more for the American car—6 in 10 would pay $5,000 more. While Democrats are more likely than Republicans to choose the Chinese vehicle, still only about a third said this.