A new study out from researchers at Harvard University this week looked at an under-explored

component of energy transition.

Air pollution.

For years when researchers, activists, or politicians talked about moving from coal to natural gas,

they focused on greenhouse gas emissions, and specifically carbon dioxide emissions, which

are lower for gas than coal.

Over the past five years or so, we've gotten plenty of studies around that other greenhouse

gas, methane, and how the transition to gas has generated a massive amount of it.

But we haven't heard much about air pollution.

So researchers at Harvard School of Public Health turn their attention there.

The good news is that overall energy use is less of a contributor to air pollution than

it was when everything was coal fired.

The bad news is that it's still a primary contributor, and that gas and biomass are the key

culprits.

In other words, once again, we're finding out that these bridges to clean energy have only

really served to impede progress and perpetuate the same old problems.

Two of the study's authors, Jonathan Bonacore and Pari Shar Salimafard, joined me to discuss

their findings.com, coming up after this quick break.

You're listening to Drilled.

I'm Amy Westervelt.

I'm really interested in this paper, and I wanted to kind of start with maybe having you both

introduce yourselves and then tell me a little bit about what prompted you to look into

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