Neighborhood-scale air quality, public health, and equity implications of multi-modal vehicle electrification

Maxime A. Visa; Sara F. Camilleri; Anastasia Montgomery; Jordan L. Schnell; Mark Janssen; Zachariah E. Adelman; Susan C. Anenberg; Emily A. Grubert; Daniel E. Horton

doi:10.1088/2634-4505/acf60d

Neighborhood-scale air quality, public health, and equity implications of multi-modal vehicle electrification

Maxime A. Visa^*, Sara F. Camilleri, Anastasia Montgomery, Jordan L. Schnell, Mark Janssen, Zachariah E. Adelman, Susan C. Anenberg, Emily A. Grubert, Daniel E. Horton

^*Corresponding author for this work

Earth and Planetary Sciences

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

10 Scopus citations

Abstract

Electric vehicles (EVs) constitute just a fraction of the current U.S. transportation fleet; however, EV market share is surging. EV adoption reduces on-road transportation greenhouse gas emissions by decoupling transportation services from petroleum, but impacts on air quality and public health depend on the nature and location of vehicle usage and electricity generation. Here, we use a regulatory-grade chemical transport model and a vehicle-to-electricity generation unit electricity assignment algorithm to characterize neighborhood-scale (∼1 km) air quality and public health benefits and tradeoffs associated with a multi-modal EV transition. We focus on a Chicago-centric regional domain wherein 30% of the on-road transportation fleet is instantaneously electrified and changes in on-road, refueling, and power plant emissions are considered. We find decreases in annual population-weighted domain mean NO₂ (−11.83%) and PM_2.5 (−2.46%) with concentration reductions of up to −5.1 ppb and −0.98 µg m⁻³ in urban cores. Conversely, annual population-weighted domain mean maximum daily 8 h average ozone (MDA8O₃) concentrations increase +0.64%, with notable intra-urban changes of up to +2.3 ppb. Despite mixed pollutant concentration outcomes, we find overall positive public health outcomes, largely driven by NO₂ concentration reductions that result in outsized mortality rate reductions for people of color, particularly for the Black populations within our domain.

Original language	English (US)
Article number	035007
Journal	Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability
Volume	3
Issue number	3
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1088/2634-4505/acf60d
State	Published - Sep 1 2023

Funding

Research reported here was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation Grants CBET-1848683 and CAREER:CAS-Climate-2239834 to DEH, an Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) grant to DEH, a McCormick Center for Engineering Sustainability and Resilience seed grant to DEH, the Ubben Program for Carbon and Climate Science postdoctoral fellowship to J L S, The Data Science fellowship from the National Science Foundation Research Traineeship and Northwestern Integrated Data-Driven Discovery in Earth and Astrophysical Sciences to A M, and undergraduate research grants from Northwestern University\u2019s Office of Undergraduate Research and Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences\u2019 Baker Program in Undergraduate Research to M A V. This research was supported in part through the computational resources and staff contributions provided for the Quest high performance computing facility at Northwestern University which is jointly supported by the Office of the Provost, the Office for Research, and Northwestern University Information Technology. We thank William Raich, Henry Roman, and Melanie Jackson from the Industrial Economic as well as Neal Fann, Elizabeth Chan and Ali Kamal from the U.S. EPA for deriving and providing the census tract-level all-cause mortality rates used in this study. Environmental Defense Fund; U.S. National Science Foundation Grants CBET-1848683 and CAREER:CAS-Climate-2239834

Keywords

air pollution
air quality
electric vehicles
environmental justice
public health
transportation

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment
Environmental Science (miscellaneous)
Environmental Engineering
Geography, Planning and Development

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.1088/2634-4505/acf60d

Cite this

Visa, M. A., Camilleri, S. F., Montgomery, A., Schnell, J. L., Janssen, M., Adelman, Z. E., Anenberg, S. C., Grubert, E. A., & Horton, D. E. (2023). Neighborhood-scale air quality, public health, and equity implications of multi-modal vehicle electrification. Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability, 3(3), Article 035007. https://doi.org/10.1088/2634-4505/acf60d

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AU - Janssen, Mark

AU - Adelman, Zachariah E.

AU - Anenberg, Susan C.

AU - Grubert, Emily A.

AU - Horton, Daniel E.

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AB - Electric vehicles (EVs) constitute just a fraction of the current U.S. transportation fleet; however, EV market share is surging. EV adoption reduces on-road transportation greenhouse gas emissions by decoupling transportation services from petroleum, but impacts on air quality and public health depend on the nature and location of vehicle usage and electricity generation. Here, we use a regulatory-grade chemical transport model and a vehicle-to-electricity generation unit electricity assignment algorithm to characterize neighborhood-scale (∼1 km) air quality and public health benefits and tradeoffs associated with a multi-modal EV transition. We focus on a Chicago-centric regional domain wherein 30% of the on-road transportation fleet is instantaneously electrified and changes in on-road, refueling, and power plant emissions are considered. We find decreases in annual population-weighted domain mean NO2 (−11.83%) and PM2.5 (−2.46%) with concentration reductions of up to −5.1 ppb and −0.98 µg m−3 in urban cores. Conversely, annual population-weighted domain mean maximum daily 8 h average ozone (MDA8O3) concentrations increase +0.64%, with notable intra-urban changes of up to +2.3 ppb. Despite mixed pollutant concentration outcomes, we find overall positive public health outcomes, largely driven by NO2 concentration reductions that result in outsized mortality rate reductions for people of color, particularly for the Black populations within our domain.

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Neighborhood-scale air quality, public health, and equity implications of multi-modal vehicle electrification

Abstract

Funding

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

UN SDGs

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