Large-Scale Electric Vehicle Adoption Can Improve Air Quality And Health

Eddie Gonzales Jr. – MessageToEagle.com – Large-scale adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) could lead to significant population-level health benefits, according to a new study.

Image credit: andreas160578 – Pixabay

Researchers from the University of Toronto used simulations to show that aggressive electrification of U. S. vehicles, combined with renewable electricity generation, could yield health benefits worth $84 billion to $188 billion by 2050.

Even with less aggressive grid decarbonization, health benefits are often predicted to be in the tens of billions of dollars.

“When researchers examine the impacts of EVs, they typically focus on climate change in the form of mitigating CO2 emissions,” says Professor Marianne Hatzopoulou, one of the co-authors of the study, which is publishedin the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“But CO2 is not the only thing that comes out of the tailpipe of an internal combustion vehicle. They produce many air pollutants that have a significant, quantifiable impact on public health. Furthermore, evidence shows that those impacts are disproportionately felt by populations that are low-income, racialized or marginalized.”

Other members of the team include lead author and postdoctoral fellow Jean Schmitt, Professors Daniel Posen and Heather Maclean, and Amir F.N. Abdul-Manan of Saudi Aramco’s Strategic Transport Analysis Team.

Previously, the team used life-cycle assessment expertise to model large-scale EV adoption in the U. S. They found that EVs positively affect climate change but won’t meet Paris Agreement targets alone. They recommend combining EV adoption with public transit investment, active transportation, and higher housing density.

The team adjusted their models in a recent study to include non-climate benefits of EV adoption by simulating air pollutants from fossil fuels, such as nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides, and PM2. 5 particles. However, modeling these pollutants is very different from modeling CO2, which lasts for decades and ends up well-mixed throughout the atmosphere.

“In contrast, these pollutants and their associated health impacts are more localized. It matters not only how much we are emitting, but also where we emit them,” Posen said.

While EVs produce no tailpipe emissions, they can still contribute to air pollution if powered by fossil fuel plants. This shifts pollution from highways to nearby communities, according to the study.

Another complication is that neither the air pollution from the power grid nor that from internal combustion vehicles is expected to stay constant over time.

“Today’s gasoline-powered cars produce a lot less pollution than those that were built 20 years ago, many of which are still on the road,” says Schmitt.

“So, if we want to fairly compare EVs to internal combustion vehicles, we have to account for the fact that air pollution will still go down as these older vehicles get replaced. We can also see that the power grid is getting greener over time, as more renewable generation gets installed.”

The team chose two main scenarios to simulate out to the year 2050. In the first, they assumed that no more EVs would be built, but that older internal combustion vehicles would continue to be replaced with newer, more efficient ones.

In the secon, they assumed that by 2035, all new vehicles sold will be electric. Norway aims to end non-electric vehicle sales next year, and Canada by 2035.

They considered various rates for transitioning the electric grid to low-emitting and renewable energy sources: maintaining the current rate, slowing down, or accelerating over the next decades.

The team also simulated levels of air pollution across the United States.

“Our simulation shows that the cumulative public health benefits of large-scale EV adoption between now and 2050 could run into the hundreds of billions of dollars,” says Posen.

“That’s significant, but another thing we found is that we only get these benefits if the grid continues to get greener. We are already transitioning away from fossil fuel power generation, and it’s likely to continue in the future. But for the sake of argument, we modeled what would happen if we artificially freeze the grid in its current state. In that case, we’d actually be better off simply replacing our old internal combustion vehicles with new ones—but again, this is not a very realistic scenario.”

Another question: is it more important to decarbonize the transportation sector through EV adoption, or to first decarbonize the power generation sector, which is the ultimate source of pollution associated with EVs?

“It’s important to remember that the vehicles being sold today will continue to be used for decades. If we buy more internal combustion vehicles now, however efficient they may be, we will be locking ourselves into those tailpipe emissions for years to come, and they will spread that pollution everywhere there are roads,” says Hatzopoulou.

“We still need to decarbonize the power generation system—and we are—but we should not wait until that process is complete to get more EVs on the road. We need to start on the path to a healthier future today.”

Paper

DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2320858121

Written by Eddie Gonzales  Jr. – MessageToEagle.com Staff Writer