Authors
David Cooley and Kait Siegel (Abt Global), Emma Zinsmeister, Colby Tucker, David Tancabel (EPA)
Abt developed benefit-per-kWh (BPK) values for the Environmental Protection Agency that can help state and local government policymakers and other stakeholders estimate the monetized public health benefits of investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy (EE/RE). The BPK values represent estimates of the monetized annual public health benefits resulting from emissions reductions associated with EE/RE projects, programs, and policies. There are different values for each combination of region, EE/RE intervention type (e.g., wind, solar) and discount rate, and the values reflect energy, air quality and health benefits.
In addition to updated data, the 2021 Technical Report for EPA includes:
- Revised regions, expanding from 10 to 14.
- Benefits of two new energy types: offshore wind and distributed (rooftop) solar.
- New approaches that avoid transmission and distribution losses in values related to energy efficiency.
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Understanding Public Perception of Extreme Heat and Health Risks
This report by CRC, Abt, and the National Weather Service profiles public perception of dangerous heat events & recommends actionable messaging.
How Can State Housing Finance Agencies Improve Energy Efficiency?
Two reports provide insight on ways state housing finance agencies can advance affordable housing through energy efficiency efforts.
Report Series: Mitigating Methane: A Global Health Strategy
On behalf of the Global Climate and Health Alliance (GCHA), Abt Global produced a series of reports identifying the correlations between methane emissions and public health.Capable of heating the environment 80 times more than carbon dioxide, methane is an enormous contributor to the climate crisis. It accounts for 30 percent of the current rise in global warming, and worsens air quality by contributing to the creation of ground-level ozone, a toxic air pollutant that causes more than 1 million respiratory deaths in adults each year. Methane emitted today only remains in the atmosphere for 12 years, which means that while methane exerts health and climate effects for several years after being released into the atmosphere, cutting methane now can deliver immediate and substantial health benefits and buy time to reduce emissions of longer-lived greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.Half of the methane in the atmosphere is the result of human activity, and 95 percent of that comes from one of three sectors: energy, agriculture, and waste. This report series identifies top opportunities to reduce methane emissions in the energy, waste, and agriculture sectors to improve human health.Dive into each report to learn more about methane’s health impacts by sector and opportunities for the health community to reduce emissions at international, national, and local levels.Click an image below to download the PDF.
Climate Change and the Los Angeles’ Homelessness Response System
Abt has decades of expertise in climate risk and resilience with unparalleled experience working with homelessness response systems across the U.S.