This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: The Clean Air Act of 1970 helped standardize pollution limits at the national level, but individual politicians can wield significant influence over industrial emission rates in their districts, according to a new analysis conducted by a multi-institutional team that includes researchers at Penn State. Industrial plants located in districts represented by a narrowly elected Democrat have approximately 30% lower emissions on average than those located in districts narrowly won by a Republican, according to the researchers, who assessed nearly 40,000 industrial plants and more than 5,000 U.S.
House elections over 25 years. They also found that firms with plants in multiple districts reallocated emissions away from areas represented by Democrats. This reallocation was associated with potential financial impacts for firms as well as public health concerns for local communities.
The study was published in the September print edition of The Review of Financial Studies. "Firms have a lot more control over their emissions than we think," said study co-author Stefan Lewellen, assistant professor of finance at Penn State's Smeal College of Business. "This research suggests that even something as small as a local representative using some soft power to intervene causes those firms to turn up or turn down the pollution dial pretty significantly." Industrial plants have several levers they can theoretically adjust to reduce emissions, Lewellen said, including investing in abatement technologies like wet scrubbers—which remove pollutants directly from contaminated gas before release—increasing postproduction treatment or simply lowering production.
Indeed, the researchers found 47% higher investment in abatement technologies in Democratic districts, as well as higher rates of postproduction treatment and recycling, though there were no major differences in plant productivity. The researchers examined data from 37,368 industrial plants and 5,304 U.S. House elections between 1991 and 2016, with their core analysis focused on a smaller subset of close elections.
From these close elections, the researchers said they could isolate the effects of a representative's personal preferences from pressure from voters in their district, since the overall environmental preferences of voters in a district should be largely similar regardless of the winning candidate's party affiliation when the margin of victory is small. Congressional representatives typically do not wield much direct legislative influence over their districts, and most enforcement of Environmental Protection Agency regulations happens at the state and local levels—but politicians still hold power, the researchers said. "One of the things that's tricky about political soft power is that there's never going to be a smoking gun," Lewellen said.
"Politicians could be leaning on firms by going to state regulators and pushing for more inspections and tighter enforcement—or fewer inspections and less enforcement. You're never going to observe the phone call or the coffee meeting, so you have to look around the edges." In addition, pollution permits are often more complicated than dictating a flat cap on emissions over the course of a year, Lewellen said. Pollution limits can be determined by the day, hour or even minute and can change based on a variety of factors like temperature, making inspections a key tool for regulators to catch irregularities in a system that otherwise offers some gray area for firms to overpollute.
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