Schnell J L, Peters D R, Wong D C, Lu X, Guo H, Zhang H, Kinney P L, Horton D E
Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences and Institute for Sustainability and Energy at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA.
now at: Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder NOAA/Global Systems Laboratory, Boulder, CO, USA.
Earths Future. 2021 Feb 12;9(2). doi: 10.1029/2020ef001788.
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 NO and fine particulate matter (PM), 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 CO), but results in fewer air quality and human health improvements (145 avoided deaths). The calculated economic impacts for human health endpoints and CO reductions 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.
采用电动汽车有望带来减少空气污染物和温室气体排放的协同效益。正因如此，中国大力鼓励电动汽车的使用，然而，电动汽车的减排潜力仍有许多未知之处，包括最佳车型的优先排序、发电突发事件、清洁空气法规的影响以及电动汽车减少极端空气质量事件急性影响的能力。在此，我们使用化学传输模型展示了一系列情景，以评估电动汽车在极端冬季空气质量事件期间的潜在协同效益。我们发现，无论发电来源如何，重型车辆（HDV）的电动化在氮氧化物和细颗粒物（PM）方面持续改善空气质量，在2013年1月臭名昭著的污染事件期间，可能避免因急性污染物暴露导致的562人死亡（约占总过早死亡率的1%）。然而，重型车辆电动化在没有增加无排放发电的情况下不会减少温室气体排放。相比之下，由于排放特征不同，中国轻型车辆（LDV）的电动化持续减少温室气体排放（约200万吨二氧化碳），但空气质量改善和对人类健康的改善较少（避免145人死亡）。计算得出的轻型车辆电动化对人类健康终点的经济影响和二氧化碳减排量几乎是当今重型车辆电动化的两倍（1.55亿美元对8700万美元），但在使用增强型无排放发电为其供电时，两者相差约25%。总体而言，我们发现电动汽车对缓解严重冬季污染事件的益处不大，发电部门持续减排将带来最大的人类健康和经济效益。
