Jorgenson Andrew, Longhofer Wesley, Grant Don
Department of Sociology and the Environmental Studies Program, Boston College, 140 Commonwealth Avenue, Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 USA.
Goizueta Business School, Emory University, 1300 Clifton Road, Atlanta, GA 30322 USA.
Sci Rep. 2016 Jul 1;6:28661. doi: 10.1038/srep28661.
Past research on the disproportionality of pollution suggests a small subset of a sector's facilities often produces the lion's share of toxic emissions. Here we extend this idea to the world's electricity sectors by calculating national-level disproportionality Gini coefficients for plant-level carbon emissions in 161 nations based on data from 19,941 fossil-fuel burning power plants. We also evaluate if disproportionalities in plant-level emissions are associated with increased national carbon emissions from fossil-fuel based electricity production, while accounting for other well-established human drivers of greenhouse gas emissions. Results suggest that one potential pathway to decreasing nations' greenhouse gas emissions could involve reducing disproportionality among fossil-fuel power plants by targeting those plants in the upper end of the distribution that burn fuels more inefficiently to produce electricity.
过去关于污染不均衡性的研究表明，一个行业中的一小部分设施往往产生了绝大部分的有毒排放。在此，我们将这一观点扩展到全球电力行业，基于19941座化石燃料发电厂的数据，计算了161个国家电厂层面碳排放的国家级不均衡性基尼系数。我们还评估了电厂层面排放的不均衡性是否与基于化石燃料的电力生产导致的国家碳排放增加有关，同时考虑了其他已确定的温室气体排放的人类驱动因素。结果表明，减少国家温室气体排放的一个潜在途径可能是通过针对分布高端那些燃烧燃料发电效率较低的电厂，来降低化石燃料发电厂之间的不均衡性。
