Projects

Social protections programs and climate change adaptation

How will we be able to adapt to global climate change? Given the amount of unavoidable warming and the growing movement in the international community to provide funding for adaptation, it is critically important to identify where adaptation has occurred and what policies can effectively encourage future climate adaptation and resilience. The fundamental goals of our work is (1) to provide policymakers with an evidence base that can be used to craft adaptation policies and shape funding priorities, and (2) to generate publicly available data that serves as an authoritative and comprehensive resource for researchers and policymakers studying climate adaptation and resilience in the developing world.

Climate and health benefits of induction stove promotion in Ecuador

Household electrification is an important part of a carbon neutral future, but the effectiveness of specific policies and their co-benefits remains a crucial question. We investigate a large transition from gas to electric cookstoves in Ecuador and assess its impacts on electricity consumption, greenhouse gas emission, and health. First, we precisely estimate changes in customer-level electricity consumption after PEC enrollment using data from Ecuador's two largest utilities over the last five to eight years. Second, we conduct a complementary analysis using monthly nationwide parish level data to show how average residential electricity consumption changes with the fraction of customers enrolled in PEC. Third, we assess the relationship between increased PEC-related electricity consumption and residential LPG sales. Fourth, we combine these data with detailed information on Ecuador's electricity grid fuel mix each to provide estimates of how greenhouse gas emissions have changed with the expansion of PEC. Finally, we assess whether parish-level induction stove use is associated with hospitalizations. This work was published in PNAS. We also conducted a small-scale experiment where we showed that NO2 exposures were much higher when households used gas vs. induction stoves -- published in Environmental health perspectives.

Wildfire smoke and health in the US

Wildfires represent a growing threat to public health across the US and the world. With the ECHO lab at Stanford, we have work characterizing spatio-temporally resolved wildfire specific ambient air pollution concentrations, indoor air pollution concentrations during wildfires, population-level behavioral responses to wildfires, and health impacts of wildfire smoke exposure. 

Using repeat surveys to assess the impact of COVID-19 on household energy use

India's recent government initiatives have driven dramatic increases in the household use of clean cooking fuels. However, most households still rely on biomass cooking fuels for some of their energy needs. The COVID-19 pandemic may exacerbate this pattern of fuel stacking. We leverage and extend a recently completed energy survey of 1440 households in rural Jharkhand by deploying a follow‐up, telephone‐based questionnaire multiple times over the next year, enabling analysis of how COVID‐19 and stay‐at‐home orders alter energy use behaviors.  Findings from this longitudinal study will help (1) understand drivers of stacking or exclusive LPG or biomass use; (2) provide insights into how resilient household energy use patterns are to sudden economic and social shocks; and (3) establish guidance that may inform planning for the next pandemic or other unexpected shock. Check out our publication in Nature energy!