Just decarbonization? Environmental inequality, air quality, and the clean energy transition
研究了美国电力部门脱碳可能加剧环境不平等，而明确要求改善空气质量的政策可同时实现脱碳与减少环境不平等。
Abstract Environmental inequalities are often large and consequential, exacerbating vertical inequalities of income and class and horizontal inequalities along lines of race and ethnicity. Climate policies can widen these inequalities as well as mitigate them, depending on their design. Decarbonization of the US electricity sector illustrates these possibilities. A strategy narrowly focused on carbon reduction alone is likely in some regions to increase disparities in exposure to localized co-pollutants emitted by fossil fuel combustion and, in some cases, to increase exposure in absolute terms. Strategies that in addition explicitly mandate improvements in air quality, both overall and specifically for frontline communities, can couple decarbonization with remediation of environmental inequalities and broad-based gains in public health.