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

本项目通过评估全球和国家社会因素如何与单个发电厂的组织特征联合收割机结合来塑造排放结果，并调查组织和全球因素对发电厂的联合影响，来研究不同国际关系对发电厂CO2排放率和水平的影响。碳排放量可能因调节碳排放量的国家监管制度而异。 该项目解决了三个研究问题：哪组组织，世界体系和世界社会结构决定化石燃料发电厂的二氧化碳排放率？哪一组结构导致植物的排放率随着时间的推移而改善，但排放水平却恶化？ 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，该项目将使用全球发展中心最新发布的关于全球2万多个发电厂的碳排放和结构特征的数据。它将采用多级回归技术结合新的模糊集分析（fsQCA）方法，可以确定哪些因素的组合与结果相关联。与结构配置的文献相一致，我们假设具有高CO2排放率和水平的工厂共享组织，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工厂的结构配置文件。该项目旨在提供有关二氧化碳排放的结构性来源的新信息，并将推进世界系统，世界社会和组织对环境的研究，迄今为止，这些研究通常被视为竞争而不是互补的观点。 该项目的调查结果将有助于制定一项基于部门的战略，以减少二氧化碳排放，调查结果将有助于确定世界各地发电厂达到的标准。调查结果也可能是感兴趣的电力行业，因为它可能成为未来的监管措施，在特定的发电厂子集的目标。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。该项目还包括培训一名研究生研究助理。

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.