Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago - EPIC

In March, Cuba was left in the dark for more than a day after fuel shortages triggered a nationwide blackout affecting millions. The event followed several major outages in recent years, from Texas to Chile, to Spain and Portugal.

How do these blackouts impact local economies?

A new study by EPIC scholar Koichiro Ito of The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and co-authors Luis E. Gonzales and Mar Reguant examines Chile’s 2025 blackout and finds the impacts can be significant: a several-hour outage resulted in $36 million in lost economic activity, highlighting the potential value of investing in grid infrastructure.

“To build reliable power systems, we need a clear grasp of both the immediate and longer-term impacts of large-scale blackouts. This is vital information for guiding decisions to make our grid more resilient ahead of an outage, and for restoring power after an outage happens,” says Ito.

Learn more:

How do Blackouts Impact the Local Economy? In March, Cuba was in the dark for more than a day after fuel shortages caused a nationwide blackout affecting tens of millions. The event came after several other power outages that caught headlines in recent years. How do these nationwide blackouts impact the economy? A new study of a 2025 blackou...

🌍 A story of impact: How data is driving policy action in .

is moving from being undermeasured to being precisely tracked, thanks to the work of Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency and the support of the EPIC Air Quality Fund.

The Greater Accra Region stands as Ghana’s economic engine. Yet, this progress has also made the region one of the nation’s most polluted, with average particulate pollution more than double the World Health Organization guideline of 5 µg/m³.

At the heart of this pollution crisis is Tema, a bustling port city and industrial hub. Here, the activities that drive national growth have reshaped local , leaving nearby communities to navigate between complex socioeconomic benefits and health trade-offs. For years, this pollution exposure was part of daily life in Tema but remained insufficiently captured by reliable air quality monitoring systems. This data gap is now beginning to close thanks to a permanent air quality monitoring network in Tema.

This story is the first in the EPIC Air Quality Fund Impact series that showcases how the Fund supports local governments and organizations in installing air quality monitors, providing open data to communities, and driving national-level impact in countries that could benefit the most.

Does your country need a stronger air quality monitoring network? Apply to the EPIC Air Quality Fund by April 30 (11:59 PM CET) ➡️ https://aqfund.epic.uchicago.edu/call-for-proposals/

Read the full impact story ➡️ https://aqfund.epic.uchicago.edu/news/air-quality-fund-impact-how-air-quality-data-is-driving-policy-action-in-ghana/

🌍 The EPIC Fund Launches its Second Open Call for Proposals to Expand Local Air Monitoring

We are officially launching our 2026 call for proposals today at the conference in Bangkok.

shortens lives more than HIV/AIDS and malaria combined, yet less than 0.1 percent of global philanthropy is devoted to the issue. Following the closure of the U.S. State Department’s overseas air monitoring program, 36 nations—home to 3.4 billion people—were left without their only high-quality source of air quality information.

📣 The opportunity: the Fund is offering 50,000 USD to 75,000 USD to at least 20 selected groups over an 18-month period. We are seeking government entities, non-profits, university groups, and for-profit entities dedicated to bringing PM2.5 data to the public to drive systemic, national-level policy impact.

📅 Deadline: April 30 (11:59pm CET)

Learn more + apply ➡️ https://aqfund.epic.uchicago.edu/call-for-proposals/

Register for an informational webinar on the application process: https://uchicago.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_o1XFehgbTyqz2-TMF5MI_g #/registration

Our #1 Top Chart of 2025 is from the Climate Impact Lab. Researchers Solomon Hsiang (Stanford Doerr) & Andrew Hultgren (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), among others, measured the effect of climate change on six staple crops—corn, soybean, rice, wheat, cassava and sorghum. They found every additional 1°C of global warming on average drags down the world’s ability to produce food by about 4% of current daily consumption.

These impacts are not equal around the world. Today’s richer, breadbasket regions experience the greatest losses—about 40%. The world’s poorest regions also experience significant losses, with crops declining 20-30% by the end of the century.

Taking actions to adapt—like switching crop varieties, shifting planting and harvesting dates, or altering fertilizer use—doesn’t eliminate the threat. The data shows adaptation measures can offset about ⅓ of climate-related agricultural losses in 2100 if emissions continue to rise, but ⅔ remain.

Explore more from the : https://bit.ly/4pTAQCI

Our #4 Top Chart of 2025 from EPIC Director Michael Greenstone, with co-authors including Rohini Pande, Nicholas Ryan, and Anant Sudarshan, highlights a new tool for tackling air pollution without sacrificing economic growth: markets.

Working with the Indian state of Gujarat, the EPIC/J-PAL team launched the world’s first particulate pollution market in the industrial city of Surat.

🏭 Facilities outside of the market following command-and-control rules didn’t comply with the rules about a third of the time. With the market’s more flexible approach, only 1% percent of facilities didn’t comply.
🌍 Plants in the market emitted 20–30% less pollution than those under the traditional approach.
💰 And they did it at 11% lower cost, increasing profits.

Building on the success of this pilot, EPIC and J-PAL launched the Emissions Market Accelerator to help governments worldwide scale up market-based approaches to cut pollution and save lives.

Explore more from the : https://bit.ly/3KFJXb2

Our #3 Top Chart of 2025 looks at how mandatory climate disclosure could lead to lower emissions.

EPIC launched the Climate Disclosure Explorer to unpack the societal cost of greenhouse gas emissions coming from corporate activities, known as corporate carbon damages. Based on work by Christian Leuz (The University of Chicago Booth School of Business), Michael Greenstone, and Patricia Breuer (Erasmus University Rotterdam), the platform shows average corporate carbon damages are large, equaling about 44 percent of firms’ operating profit, but the damages vary significantly within each sub-industry. If all high emitters reduced their emissions to meet the sub-industry median damages, the researchers estimate that it would reduce total emissions by 49 percent.

Explore more from the : https://bit.ly/3KFJYf6

When people understand the air they breathe is harmful to their health, they can take action. Air quality monitors can give them this information at a local level, daily.

Our Top Chart #4 shows that nearly 70 percent of the world’s population lives in countries where fewer than three monitors exist for every one million people—leaving nearly 5 billion people, many of whom live in some of the world’s most polluted countries, without access to adequate information about their air. EPIC’s Air Quality Fund is supporting 31 awardees in government, academia, and civil society who are installing more than 700 monitors across 19 countries where citizens are losing a combined 2 billion life years due to particulate pollution.

But, more work remains. These 19 countries are part of a cohort of 83 countries that the Air Quality Fund points to as having a “higher opportunity” to generate impact if given a small investment toward building up their air quality infrastructure. The 2.9 billion people living in these countries are seeing their lives cut short by about 1.7 years on average because of air pollution.

More from our #4 Chart of 2025: https://bit.ly/44buMwV

Our #5 Top Chart of 2025, highlights findings from our poll with NORC at the University of Chicago. The poll found that younger Republicans (18-29) disagree with their older counterparts (60+) on a wide variety of energy and climate policies.

Generally, more younger Republicans think it is important to expand clean energy and support incentives for electric vehicles and funding to help communities adapt to climate change. The divide between younger and older Republicans on these issues ranges from a 16-point to a 21-point difference. This follows in line with the trend that an increasing share of younger Republicans believes in human-driven climate change.

Conversely, older Republicans support the expansion of traditional fossil fuel energy. While 39 percent of young Republicans support expanding U.S. oil and gas production, 80 percent of older Republicans said the same—a 40-point difference.

Explore: https://bit.ly/4pV1OK9

Our #6 Top Chart of 2025 from Harris School of Public Policy Assistant Professor Eyal Frank and co-authors at Max Auffhammer (UC Berkeley), David McLaughlin (Environmental Defense Fund) and Elisheba Spiller (Resources for the Future) challenges a common criticism of the Endangered Species Act (ESA)—that habitat protections decrease property values. They found that across the United States, on average, that is not the case.

Homes inside protected areas hardly depreciated in value, while homes just outside protected areas appreciated in value. Additionally, the sale price of homes just outside protected areas increased by as much as 10 percent as these areas became saturated markets where homeowners valued “backing up to open space.”

Explore more from the : https://bit.ly/4ouaDcx

Our #7 Top Chart of 2025 from the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI) shows the United States and Canada suffered the largest increase in fine particulate pollution globally in 2023, fueled by the worst wildfire season in Canada’s history, according to the Air Quality Life Index (AQLI). In the United States, the fires contributed to pollution levels not seen in over a decade and a 20 percent rise from 2022.

The resulting pollution spread across Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, and even extended to Pennsylvania, Oklahoma, and as far south as Mississippi. Counties in these states were the top 10 most polluted regions in the country—replacing counties in California, which typically dominate the list.

Explore more from the : https://bit.ly/4pdi3SK

Our #8 Top Chart of 2025 from EPIC researcher Ashwin Rode & co-authors Tom Bearpark and Archana Patankar highlights the growing human toll of heavy rains and flooding. Nearly 1.8 billion people live in flood-prone areas—a number expected to rise with rapid urbanization and climate change. At the same time, drainage, sanitation and waste systems have not kept pace in many parts of the Global South, leading to both immediate deaths and longer-term disease outbreaks.

Rode and his co-authors study the impact of rainfall on mortality in one of the world’s largest cities: Mumbai, India. He finds heavy rainfall accounts for about 8% of deaths during a typical monsoon season—a number comparable with cancer deaths in the city. The impact of this rainfall takes a heavier toll on the poor, accounting for 1% of deaths in the city’s slums, as well as women and children, making up 11% and 18% of deaths, respectively. Intense bursts of rain and high tides lead to more deaths. These deaths will increase by about 20% with climate change’s increased rainfall and sea level rise, if steps aren’t taken to adapt.

Explore more from the : https://bit.ly/4rEA79S

Our #9 Top Chart of 2025 from The University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy Assistant Professor Hyuk-soo Kwon and his co-authors shows how “learning-by-doing” helps drive down the cost of electric vehicles—increasing sales.

They find that with subsidies alone, global EV sales would increase by 29.9%. But when learning-by-doing is factored in, global EV sales surge by 170%—a combined effect roughly 60% larger than either subsidies or learning-by-doing could achieve on their own, underscoring how policy and innovation work best together.

Explore more from the : https://bit.ly/3KFK8m