University of Wisconsin researchers released a report Friday favoring climate change policy intended to clean the air with renewable energy sources as a cost-efficient environmental strategy.

The financial gains resulting from this change are expected to quickly offset the startup cost of adopting such a policy.

UW professor of public affairs and environmental studies Gregory Nemet, UW professor of environmental studies Tracey Holloway and Associate Scientist and Director for the UW Energy Institute Paul Meier published the report promoting national and international climate change policy in the journal of Environmental Research Letters Jan. 22.

The report describes the “co-benefits” of cleaning the atmosphere while enhancing public health through efforts to clean the air.

“It just makes sense to be designing a policy that deals with all of the emissions at the same time,” Director of the Center for Sustainability and the Global Environment Holloway said.

According to Nemet, the economically sound and healthy result of this policy could allow his research team to aggressively pursue a green policy, encourage international governments to consider a similar approach and sway Congress to pass reusable energy legislation.

“If you take into account the positive effects on human health… it would make climate change cheaper,” Nemet said.

He expressed the certainty of the advantages these changes will provide, along with the notion these benefits deal directly with human health.

“Most of the changes that you would do to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gasses also have the benefit of reducing global pollutants,” Nemet said.

Nemet said these strategies would also lead to fewer health care costs, because governments will have fewer people with asthma and other respiratory ailments. As a result, these workers will become more productive, enjoy a higher quality of life and live longer.

Although the research team does not know exactly how long it would take for this policy to offset the startup costs for the renewable energy equipment, Nemet noted that once enacted, the green equipment would immediately start producing economic and health benefits.

“The nice thing about air quality benefits is that because the gases don’t stay in the atmosphere for that long, as soon as you start reducing the emissions of them, you start getting an improvement in air quality and the resulting human health,” Nemet said.

Nemet estimated it would take about one year for us to see a difference in air quality.

UW students can work on the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy through the Climate Leadership Challenge, offering a $100,000 grand prize for UW students interested in working on the climate change problem, Nemet added.

“I think maybe the biggest opportunity is to take advantage of the fact that we have tens of thousands of students here who could potentially be working on these problems,” Nemet said.