By Allison Donnelly

Since the Bass Connections program is a major component of “Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke,” it makes sense to point out just how much this concept of interdisciplinary research has been a part of our work so far.

Take our last Monday meeting for example. Kristie, Yanyou, and I meet for about an hour to go through our weekly goals, explain our research to each other, and ask a lot of questions. Yanyou presented the successes he’s been having matching U.S. refinery capacity data with their emissions, and a conversation ensued regarding which measurements we would use to gauge refinery output (barrels per stream day, current year or next year? Barrels per calendar day?) Less than ten minutes later, we were defining where in the world of legal citations we were. Turns out there are three different places we’ll look to for authority – §111(d) of the 1970 Clean Air Act, which is also found in the US Code under Title 42, section 7411 (42 USC §7411), and other EPA regulations found in the Federal Register under Title 40. A little while later I was explaining a few of the processes for oil refining and where emissions might be generated along the way, and pointing out a handy list of acronyms I had created so we could all get our BOFs and EAFs straight.

Even as we’re hashing out these specific issues – even as we’re deciding the iron & steel industry refers to a product as “ferrous alloy” because “ironic alloy” just doesn’t sound right – we are each becoming intimately acquainted with these industries and the issues they confront. At the end of the day this isn’t just a neat school project. The people we talk to are real, the regulations we are studying are real, and the policy recommendations we submit at the end of the year are real. It became abundantly clear to each of us during our second group meeting when we discussed what actually goes into creating EPA regulations that the issue is far more complex than any one of our individual fields of study. It’s only through pooling our expertise that we can gain enough understanding to be able to talk to industry experts and ultimately start a dialogue on the future of greenhouse gas regulations for these industries.