Makena Coffman

Does air pollution increase electric vehicle adoption? Evidence from U.S. metropolitan areas, 2011–2018

April 15, 2022

A publication in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Policy by a team of economists including UHERO’s Coffman, Hayashida, and La Croix shows that changes in local air pollution within U.S. metropolitan areas are associated with changes in consumer purchases of new EVs. The authors find a positive association between PM2.5 pollution and BEV adoption, and a negative […]

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Please join us! Carbon Taxes, Credits and Offsets Webinar (3/16)

March 4, 2022

Join UHERO’s Makena Coffman for a webinar discussion on March 16, 2022 at 10-11 HST on the results of the 2020 Hawaii Carbon Pricing Study mandated by the Hawaii Legislature and the 2021 follow-up study. The title of the event is “Carbon Taxes, Credits and Offsets: Means for Climate Mitigation and Adaptation.” Carbon taxes, credits and offsets can […]

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Are We Hitting Our Targets? A Look at Hawai‘i’s GHG Emissions

August 11, 2021

By Makena Coffman, Maja Schjervheim, and Paul Bernstein Over the past three years, the State of Hawai‘i Department of Health has released a Hawai‘i Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report. This year’s report added an inventory for 2017, as well as projections through 2030 based on existing policies and trends. UHERO collaborated with ICF on this project and […]

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Is a Carbon Tax Viable for a Small Island Economy?

June 17, 2021

By Maja Schjervheim, Paul Bernstein, Sumner La Croix, Makena Coffman, and Sherilyn Hayashida For the third year in a row, a carbon tax bill fizzled out at the Hawaiʻi State Legislature. Perhaps it was the difficult timing of introducing a new tax in the wake of a pandemic. Perhaps it was due to qualms regarding […]

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Recovery to Resilience: Steps Toward the Post-COVID Economy

October 14, 2020

Wednesday, October 21, 8:00 am Register on Zoom and submit questions in advance HERE. Covid-19 has provoked the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and Hawai‘i now has the weakest economy in the nation, as a measure of GDP decline. Join us to discuss strategies to navigate the recession and set the stage for […]

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EV driver characteristics: Evidence from Hawaii

March 1, 2020

Electric vehicles (EVs) offer an opportunity to dramatically decrease greenhouse gas emissions within the transport sector if fueled by renewable energy. Hawaii had been early-on considered an ideal place to launch new EVs because of the limited driving range of its island geography. Though it ranks second in new EV registrations per capita in the […]

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Integrating Renewable Energy with Time Varying Pricing

August 13, 2018

With increasing adoption of intermittent sources of renewable energy, effective integration is paramount to fully realizing societal benefits. This study asks the question, how valuable is residential real-time pricing (RTP) in comparison to time-of-use (TOU) rates to absorb increasing sources of intermittent renewable energy? We couple a detailed power sector model with a residential electricity […]

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Integrating Renewable Energy: A Commercial Sector Perspective on Price-Responsive Load-Shifting

July 23, 2018

Price-based demand response is an important component to achieving Hawaii’s 100% Renewable Portfolio Standard. This report provides a review of the impacts of time varying pricing programs for the commercial and industrial sectors. It presents commercial sector load patterns and rates for Oahu to gain insight into the potential impacts by sector of implementing time […]

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Do electric vehicle incentives matter? Evidence from the 50 U.S. states

June 7, 2018

UHERO congratulates Sherilyn Wee, Makena Coffman, and Sumner La Croix on the publication of, “Do electric vehicle incentives matter? Evidence from the 50 U.S. states,” in Research Policy. This research measures the effectiveness of state-level policies on the adoption of electric vehicles in the United States. Read more about this in The Role of Policy […]

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