Collaborative Research: The Effects of Organizational, World-System, and World Society Factors on Power Plants' Emissions

该项目通过评估全球和国家社会因素如何与个别发电厂的组织特征相结合来影响排放结果，并调查组织和全球因素对发电厂的联合影响，来研究不同的国际关系对发电厂二氧化碳排放量和水平的影响。碳排放可能会因调解它们的国家监管制度而有所不同。这个项目解决了三个研究问题：哪些组织、世界体系和世界社会结构决定了化石燃料发电厂的二氧化碳排放量？这些结构中的哪几组会导致工厂的排放量随着时间的推移而改善，但它们的排放水平会恶化？组织和全球因素对工厂排放结果的影响在多大程度上可以用工厂所在国的监管制度来解释？为了回答这些问题，这个项目将使用全球发展中心最新发布的关于全球2万多家发电厂的碳排放和结构特征的数据。它将使用多级回归技术与新的模糊集分析(FsQCA)方法相结合，这些方法可以确定哪些因素组合与结果相关。与有关结构配置的文献一致，我们假设具有高二氧化碳排放速率和水平的植物共享组织、世界系统和世界社会结构的某些组合，国家环境政策的有效性将取决于植物的结构特征。该项目寻求提供有关二氧化碳排放结构性来源的新信息，它将推动迄今为止通常被视为相互竞争而不是互补观点的世界系统、世界社会和组织对环境的研究。该项目的发现将有助于制定以部门为基础的战略，以减轻二氧化碳排放，研究结果将有助于确定世界各地发电厂达到的标准。调查结果也可能引起电力行业的兴趣，因为它可能成为未来针对特定发电厂子集的监管举措。最后，项目成果可以支持行业倡议，以优化成员设施的自我监管和环境绩效。该项目还包括一名研究生研究助理的培训。

This project examines the effects of different international relationships on electric power plant CO2 emission rates and levels, by assessing how global and national social factors combine with the organizational characteristics of individual power plants to shape emission outcomes, and investigates how the conjoint effects of organizational and global factors on plants? carbon emissions may vary by the national regulatory systems that mediate them. This project addresses three research questions: Which sets of organizational, world-system, and world society structures determine fossil fuel power plants' CO2 emission rates? Which sets of these structures cause plants' emission rates to improve over time but their emission levels to worsen? And to what extent can the effects of organizational and global factors on plants' emission outcomes be explained by the regulatory systems of plants' host nations?To answer these questions, this project will use newly released data compiled by the Center for Global Development on the carbon emissions and structural characteristics of over 20,000 power plants throughout the world. It will employ multi-level regression techniques in conjunction with novel fuzzy set analytic (fsQCA) methods that can identify which combinations of factors are associated with an outcome. Consistent with the literature on structural configurations, we hypothesize that plants with high CO2 emission rates and levels share certain combinations of organizational, world-system, and world society structures and the effectiveness of national environmental policies will depend on plants' structural profiles. This project seeks to provide new information on the structural sources of CO2 emissions, and it will advance world-systems, world society, and organizational research on the environment that to date have been typically treated as competing rather than complementary perspectives. This project's findings will help to develop a sector-based strategy to mitigating CO2 emissions, and findings should help determine the standards met by power plants around the world. Findings may also be of interest to the electricity industry, as it may become possible to target future regulatory initiatives at specific subsets of power plants. Finally, project results could support industry initiatives to optimize self-regulation and environmental performance of member facilities. The project also includes training for a graduate student research assistant.