Can taking existing pollution data and opening it up to the public create pressure on industries to reduce emissions? Researchers from EPoD, the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago, and J-PAL South Asia are collaborating with environmental regulators in one of India’s largest states to find out. The star-ratings initiative provides the public with report cards showing the environmental performance of industries operating near them, based on the density of fine particulate pollution coming from their smoke stacks. 

The Indian state of Maharashtra has an economy comparable in size to many countries, and is also India’s most industrialized, with extensive production of textiles, cement, power, and others. While Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) regularly conducts compliance tests of industries, the results are not readily understandable for a layperson. Working with MPCB, researchers helped to develop a star rating system providing an easy-to-interpret rating of the industries in their area. With an easy-to-use website, the public and industries themselves can see what industries may be close to where they live and exert pressure in the case of under-performing industries. 

Industries themselves can also easily compare performance with their peers - providing incentive for those with poor records to improve and for those at the top to continue to use best-in-class emissions reduction technologies. 

The star rating website currently includes data from over 20,000 samples covering 200 industries, with more to be added. The state of Odisha has also announced that it will soon launch a similar initiative.

These schemes cost little to implement, and if more states adopt them, India could experience a revolution in environmental transparency. Industry already competes for profits – pollution ratings could make them compete to be greener as well.

Principal Investigators:
Rohini Pande
Anant Sudarshan, University of Chicago
Nicholas Ryan, Yale University
Michael Greenstone, University of Chicago

This research is supported by: 
International Growth Center
MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design
MIT Governance Initiative
Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (PEDL), a joint research initiative of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and the Department for International Development (DFID).