Electric Vehicle: Public Health and Climate Benefits

A research team led by Daniel Peters at Northwestern University has investigated that if we introducing electrifying vehicles in the streets of the United States could annually prevent hundreds-to-thousands of premature accidental deaths.This work highlights the potential of a synergistic solution to reduce CO₂ emissions by hundreds to millions of tons annually. The estimate of economic damages induced by introducing electrifying vehicles (EV) adoption is substantial. With current infrastructure, about 25% of electrifying vehicles adoption in the US can save approximately $16.8 billion annually, has been told in the study entitled"Public Health and Climate Benefits and Trade offs of U.S. Vehicle Electrification," in GeoHealth on 13^th August 2020 [1]. 

Vehicle electrification in the United States could prevent hundreds to thousands of premature deaths annually while reducing carbon emissions by hundreds of millions of tons. This highlights the potential of co-beneficial solutions to climate change that not only curbs greenhouse gas emissions but also reduce the health burden of harmful air pollution.

-Daniel Peters, a climate scientist

 Figure 1. Welcome to the new world [2].

In this study, they have reported on premature mortality as a health endpoint, as it captures a range of cardiovascular and respiratory pathways. They use a suite of health impact functions (HIFs) to assess the epidemiological uncertainties from exposure to PM2.5 and O₃ [3]. To explain the co-benefits and tradeoffs of EV adoption, they use CO₂ emission data and chemistry-climate model simulated surface concentrations of O₃ and PM2.5 from two different U.S. EV fractional adoption scenarios under three different battery charging power generation configurations. To provide a more comprehensive understanding of the distribution in U.S. health and climate co-benefits under potential future vehicle and energy scenarios, they analyze public health and CO₂ emission benefits and trade offs for individual states and geographic regions.

This group has conducted the study with the vehicle fleet and emissions data as from 2014. As a result, they have found that if 25% of U.S. drivers adopted EVs in 2014 and the power required to charge their batteries came from 2014's energy generation infrastructure, then 250 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions would have been mitigated.The study also pointed out that, even though the effects of carbon emissions on the climate are well documented, the combustion engines will also produce other harmful pollutants, such as particulate matter and the precursors to ground-level ozone (O₃).

Peters explained an excellent example of nitrogen oxides (NO_x), a group of chemicals produced by fossil-fuel combustion. "NO_x can potentially causea damaging effect on respiratory health, but when it's exposed to sunlight and volatile organic compounds in the atmosphere, ozone and particulate matter can form". These pollutants together can create a vast amount of health issues, such as chronic bronchitis (that's the worst!), asthma, emphysema, and of course, early death. Once these toxic pollutants exit tailpipes and smokestacks, they mingle with the environment causing catastrophic damage to human health.

The team has used a chemistry-climate model developed at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory. They were able to see how the emissions from combustion engines and power generation sources interact with one another from other emission sources. The researchers simulated air pollutant changes caused across the continental U.S. based on different levels of EV adoption and renewable energy generation. After this, they combined information form county health data from the EPA to assess the health consequences form the air quality changes caused by each electrification scenario.

Next, the research team has focused on the dollar values to avoided climate and health damages that were prevented as a result of EV adoption by applying the social cost of carbon and value of statistical life metrics to their emission change results. These commonly used policy tools were attached with a price tag to long-term health, environmental and agricultural damages.

Horton said that "The social cost of carbon and value of statistical life is much-studied and much-debated metrics, but they are regularly used to make policy decisions. It helps to put a tangible value on the consequences of emitting largely intangible gases into the public sphere that is our shared atmosphere".

In the conclusion of the study, the authors have explained their analysis of six EV adoption–energy generation scenarios and showed that if Americans were to go electric, they could annually prevent "hundreds-to-thousands of premature deaths," along with reducing CO₂ emissions by "hundreds of millions of tons".

References:

1.    D. R. Peters, J. L. Schnell, P. L. Kinney, V. Naik, D. E. Horton. Public Health and Climate Benefits and Tradeoffs of U.S. Vehicle Electrification. GeoHealth, 2020; DOI: 10.1029/2020GH000275

2.    Office  of energy efficiency & renewable energy, https://www.energy.gov/eere/electricvehicles/electric-vehicle-benefits

3.    Jerrett, M. R., Burnett, A. I., Pope, K., Ito, G., Thurston, D., Krewski, Y., et al. (2009). Longterm ozone exposure and mortality. New England Journal of Medicine, 360, 1085-1095. https://doi:10.1056/NEJMoa0803894.

Blog Written By

Dr. S. CHANDRASEKAR

The Institute for Advanced Study
Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, China

Blog Editors

Dr. A. S. Ganeshraja

Dr. K. Rajkumar