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• The Paris Agreement is expected to help. If Pollution Control Board regulates more than
fully complied, the agreement is expected 20,000 industrial plants using third party audits.
to reduce the temperature rise to 2 degree Most of the plants were complying as per the
centigrade globally. auditors’ reports. On the contrary, the pollution
Although the challenges are real, there are levels were high. This was happening as each
opportunities to find ways to make progress. The plant was hiring private auditors and they were
three key solutions could be : producing pollution reports that were being sent
to the government. Clearly, there was a conflict of
• Pricing fossil energy at its full social cost. These interest. The polluters were paying and selecting
fuels are inexpensive because the external
costs are ignored. We ignore health problems their auditors. Gujarat Pollution Control Board
and climate change costs. If these prices are designed an intervention to break this conflict of
reflected, the full cost would be very high. interest. The plants were divided into control and
treatment groups. The control group continued
• Investing in innovations. Enough investments the status quo approach to auditors. In the
need to be done in the research and treatment group, polluters paid into a central fund,
development of alternative energy. One good
example of investment in innovations is that which randomly assigned auditors to plants. No
the KWH price of solar energy generation has longer did plants or industries pay or chose their
fallen dramatically over the past four years auditors. Auditors were given bonus depending
from Rs.9 to Rs.4 in India. on their accuracy of readings through back checks.
The intervention broke the conflict of interest
• Identifying effective policy tools.
and allowed the auditors to report the truth in
Tremendous opportunities exist through the treatment group. In the control group 100%
partnerships and collaborations. EPIC India, compliance was reported and 60% were found
housed at University of Chicago’s center in Delhi, is to be below standard when back checked. The
an ambitious effort to use real world experiments pollution reduced by 30% in the treatment group.
to develop insights that lead to increased energy
access and reduced health and environmental Another example of collaboration between EPIC
problems in India. and Government of Maharashtra is the coding

He explained about the effort to reduce of all data related to pollution and creation of a
pollution in Gujarat – an experiment to improve website. Each plant is awarded a number of stars
environmental regulations in Gujarat. Gujarat is ranging from 1 to 5 by a rating system developed
the most industrialized state in India and among by Maharashtra Pollution Control Board in
its most heavily polluted states. The Gujarat collaboration with EPIC.