Why Use COBRA?
State and local governments can use COBRA to:
- Better understand the potential for clean energy to enhance air quality, health, and well being.
- Design or select program options that maximize benefits.
- Build support for clean energy investments based on the air quality and health benefits.
- Narrow a list of policy options to those that should be evaluated using more sophisticated air quality models.
- Present information about localized health benefits in easy–to–interpret tables and maps.
- Support a balanced decision-making process that considers both the potential costs and benefits of policy options.
Note: COBRA does not replace regulatory quality analyses. COBRA serves as a preliminary screening tool to identify those scenarios that might benefit from further evaluation with the more sophisticated air quality modeling approaches that are currently available.
The presentation below provides more detail on why energy choices matter, ways you might use COBRA and an example of how estimating air and health benefits affected the benefit-cost ratio for two specific clean energy technologies.