Does California's Low Carbon Fuel Standards reduce carbon dioxide emissions?

PLoS One. 2018 Sep 17;13(9):e0203167. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0203167. eCollection 2018.

Abstract

The Low Carbon Fuel Standards (LCFS) represents a new policy approach designed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by applying standards to all stages of motor fuel production. We use the synthetic control and difference-in-differences econometric methods, and Lasso machine learning to analyze the effect of the LCFS on emissions in California's transportation sector. The three different techniques provide robust evidence that the LCFS reduced carbon dioxide emissions in California's transportation sector by around 10%. Furthermore, our calculations show that improved air quality, due to the application of the LCFS, may have benefited California in the magnitude of hundreds of millions of dollars through an increase in worker's productivity.

MeSH terms

  • Air Pollutants / analysis
  • Air Pollutants / standards
  • Air Pollution / analysis
  • Air Pollution / legislation & jurisprudence
  • Air Pollution / prevention & control
  • California
  • Carbon / analysis
  • Carbon Dioxide / analysis*
  • Computer Simulation
  • Humans
  • Petroleum / analysis
  • Petroleum / standards*
  • Public Policy / economics
  • Public Policy / legislation & jurisprudence
  • Transportation
  • Vehicle Emissions / analysis
  • Vehicle Emissions / legislation & jurisprudence*
  • Vehicle Emissions / prevention & control*

Substances

  • Air Pollutants
  • Petroleum
  • Vehicle Emissions
  • Carbon Dioxide
  • Carbon

Grants and funding

The authors received no specific funding for this work.