Electric vehicle (EV) adoption promises potential air pollutant and greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction co‐benefits. As such, China has aggressively incentivized EV adoption, however much remains unknown with regard to EVs’ mitigation potential, including optimal vehicle type prioritization, power generation contingencies, effects of Clean Air regulations, and the ability of EVs to reduce acute impacts of extreme air quality events. Here, we present a suite of scenarios with a chemistry transport model that assess the potential co‐benefits of EVs during an extreme winter air quality event. We find that regardless of power generation source, heavy‐duty vehicle (HDV) electrification consistently improves air quality in terms of NO2and fine particulate matter (PM2.5), potentially avoiding 562 deaths due to acute pollutant exposure during the infamous January 2013 pollution episode (∼1% of total premature mortality). However, HDV electrification does not reduce GHG emissions without enhanced emission‐free electricity generation. In contrast, due to differing emission profiles, light‐duty vehicle (LDV) electrification in China consistently reduces GHG emissions (∼2 Mt CO2), but results in fewer air quality and human health improvements (145 avoided deaths). The calculated economic impacts for human health endpoints and CO2reductions for LDV electrification are nearly double those of HDV electrification in present‐day (155M vs. 87M US$), but are within ∼25% when enhanced emission‐free generation is used to power them. Overall, we find only a modest benefit for EVs to ameliorate severe wintertime pollution events, and that continued emission reductions in the power generation sector will have the greatest human health and economic benefits.
Impacts of sectoral, regional, species, and day-specific emissions on air pollution and public health in Washington, DC
We present a novel source attribution approach that incorporates satellite data into GEOS-Chem adjoint simulations to characterize the species-specific, regional, and sectoral contributions of daily emissions for 3 air pollutants: fine particulate matter (PM2.5), ozone (O3), and nitrogen dioxide (NO2). This approach is implemented for Washington, DC, first for 2011, to identify urban pollution sources, and again for 2016, to examine the pollution response to changes in anthropogenic emissions. In 2011, anthropogenic emissions contributed an estimated 263 (uncertainty: 130–444) PM2.5- and O3-attributable premature deaths and 1,120 (391–1795) NO2 attributable new pediatric asthma cases in DC. PM2.5 exposure was responsible for 90% of these premature deaths. On-road vehicle emissions contributed 51% of NO2-attributable new asthma cases and 23% of pollution-attributable premature deaths, making it the largest contributing individual sector to DC’s air pollution–related health burden. Regional emissions, originating from Maryland, Virginia, and Pennsylvania, were the most responsible for pollution-related health impacts in DC, contributing 57% of premature deaths impacts and 89% of asthma cases. Emissions from distant states contributed 34% more to PM2.5 exposure in the wintertime than in the summertime, occurring in parallel with strong wintertime westerlies and a reduced photochemical sink. Emission reductions between 2011 and 2016 resulted in health benefits of 76 (28–149) fewer pollution-attributable premature deaths and 227 (2–617) fewer NO2-attributable pediatric asthma cases. The largest sectors contributing to decreases in pollution-related premature deaths were energy generation units (26%) and on-road vehicles (20%). Decreases in NO2-attributable pediatric asthma cases were mostly due to emission reductions from on-road vehicles (63%). Emission reductions from energy generation units were found to impact PM2.5 more than O3, while on-road vehicle emission reductions impacted O3 proportionally more than PM2.5. This novel method is capable of capturing the sources of urban pollution at fine spatial and temporal scales and is applicable to many urban environments, globally.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1822664
- PAR ID:
- 10386243
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene
- Volume:
- 9
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2325-1026
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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null (Ed.)The recent COVID-19 pandemic has prompted global governments to take several measures to limit and contain the spread of the novel virus. In the United States (US), most states have imposed a partial to complete lockdown that has led to decreased traffic volumes and reduced vehicle emissions. In this study, we investigate the impacts of the pandemic-related lockdown on air quality in the US using remote sensing products for nitrogen dioxide tropospheric column (NO2), carbon monoxide atmospheric column (CO), tropospheric ozone column (O3), and aerosol optical depth (AOD). We focus on states with distinctive anomalies and high traffic volume, New York (NY), Illinois (IL), Florida (FL), Texas (TX), and California (CA). We evaluate the effectiveness of reduced traffic volume to improve air quality by comparing the significant reductions during the pandemic to the interannual variability (IAV) of a respective reference period for each pollutant. We also investigate and address the potential factors that might have contributed to changes in air quality during the pandemic. As a result of the lockdown and the significant reduction in traffic volume, there have been reductions in CO and NO2. These reductions were, in many instances, compensated by local emissions and, or affected by meteorological conditions. Ozone was reduced by varying magnitude in all cases related to the decrease or increase of NO2 concentrations, depending on ozone photochemical sensitivity. Regarding the policy impacts of this large-scale experiment, our results indicate that reduction of traffic volume during the pandemic was effective in improving air quality in regions where traffic is the main pollution source, such as in New York City and FL, while was not effective in reducing pollution events where other pollution sources dominate, such as in IL, TX and CA. Therefore, policies to reduce other emissions sources (e.g., industrial emissions) should also be considered, especially in places where the reduction in traffic volume was not effective in improving air quality (AQ).more » « less
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Abstract. Our work explores the impact of two important dimensions of landsystem changes, land use and land cover change (LULCC) as well as directagricultural reactive nitrogen (Nr) emissions from soils, on ozone(O3) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) in terms of air quality overcontemporary (1992 to 2014) timescales. We account for LULCC andagricultural Nr emissions changes with consistent remote sensingproducts and new global emission inventories respectively estimating theirimpacts on global surface O3 and PM2.5 concentrations as well as Nrdeposition using the GEOS-Chem global chemical transport model. Over thistime period, our model results show that agricultural Nr emissionchanges cause a reduction of annual mean PM2.5 levels over Europe andnorthern Asia (up to −2.1 µg m−3) while increasing PM2.5 levels in India, China and the eastern US (up to +3.5 µg m−3). Land cover changes induce small reductions in PM2.5 (up to −0.7 µg m−3) over Amazonia, China and India due to reduced biogenic volatile organic compound (BVOC) emissions and enhanced deposition of aerosol precursor gases (e.g., NO2, SO2). Agricultural Nr emissionchanges only lead to minor changes (up to ±0.6 ppbv) in annual meansurface O3 levels, mainly over China, India and Myanmar. Meanwhile, ourmodel result suggests a stronger impact of LULCC on surface O3 over the time period across South America; the combination of changes in drydeposition and isoprene emissions results in −0.8 to +1.2 ppbv surfaceozone changes. The enhancement of dry deposition reduces the surface ozone level (up to −1 ppbv) over southern China, the eastern US and central Africa. The enhancement of soil NO emission due to crop expansion also contributes to surface ozone changes (up to +0.6 ppbv) over sub-Saharan Africa. Incertain regions, the combined effects of LULCC and agricultural Nr emission changes on O3 and PM2.5 air quality can be comparable (>20 %) to anthropogenic emission changes over the same time period. Finally, we calculate that the increase in global agricultural Nr emissions leads to a net increase in global land area (+3.67×106km2) that potentially faces exceedance of the critical Nr load (>5 kg N ha−1 yr−1). Our result demonstrates the impacts of contemporary LULCC and agricultural Nr emission changes on PM2.5 and O3 in terms of air quality, as well as the importanceof land system changes for air quality over multidecadal timescales.more » « less
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Abstract Heavy-duty vehicles (HDVs) disproportionately contribute to the creation of air pollutants and emission of greenhouse gases—with marginalized populations unequally burdened by the impacts of each. Shifting to non-emitting technologies, such as electric HDVs (eHDVs), is underway; however, the associated air quality and health implications have not been resolved at equity-relevant scales. Here we use a neighbourhood-scale (~1 km) air quality model to evaluate air pollution, public health and equity implications of a 30% transition of predominantly diesel HDVs to eHDVs over the region surrounding North America’s largest freight hub, Chicago, IL. We find decreases in nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations but ozone (O3) increases, particularly in urban settings. Over our simulation domain NO2and PM2.5reductions translate to ~590 (95% confidence interval (CI) 150–900) and ~70 (95% CI 20–110) avoided premature deaths per year, respectively, while O3increases add ~50 (95% CI 30–110) deaths per year. The largest pollutant and health benefits simulated are within communities with higher proportions of Black and Hispanic/Latino residents, highlighting the potential for eHDVs to reduce disproportionate and unjust air pollution and associated air-pollution attributable health burdens within historically marginalized populations.
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.2021.00043
