Project Partner: Catalyst Cooperative, Summer 2026

Project Summary:  Every year, US power plants report large amounts of data about the emissions they create. But that information is often fragmented across federal agencies in inconsistent and changing formats, which makes it hard for researchers to use.

Brian partnered with Catalyst Cooperative on the Public Utility Data Liberation (PUDL) project, an open-source project that cleans and standardizes public energy data and shares it for free. His focus was the EPA’s Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) emissions data, a nationally important dataset that Catalyst Cooperative had archived but not yet incorporated into their pipeline.

Brian cleaned, normalized, and integrated the MATS data into PUDL, collaborating with the team through their shared code repository. That data is now part of PUDL’s free, open database. Researchers studying air pollution and its effects on public health can access it directly, without needing to collect raw government files or pay for commercial data services. Looking ahead, Brian is identifying additional datasets to fold into PUDL in support of his dissertation research on environmental health.

Project Deliverables:

  • Reviewed EPA MATS documentation and assessed the structure and quality of the raw data
  • Worked to clean, normalize, and integrate MATS emissions data into the PUDL pipeline
  • Contributed the integration to the open-source PUDL codebase in collaboration with the Catalyst Cooperative team
  • Documented plans for additional datasets to support ongoing dissertation research

 

Watch Brian’s URBAN internship lightning talk here.