Widespread electric vehicle adoption would save billions of dollars,
thousands of lives
Study finds improved air quality would avoid health and climate damages


Date:
August 17, 2020
Source:
Northwestern University
Summary:
A new study found that if EVs replaced 25% of combustion-engine cars
currently on the road, the United States would save approximately
$17 billion annually by avoiding damages from climate change
and air pollution. In more aggressive scenarios -- replacing 75%
of cars with EVs and increasing renewable energy generation --
savings could reach as much as $70 billion annually.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Northwestern University researchers have combined climate modeling with
public health data to evaluate the impact of electric vehicles (EVs)
on U.S. lives and the economy.


==========================================================================
A new study found that if EVs replaced 25% of combustion-engine cars
currently on the road, the United States would save approximately
$17 billion annually by avoiding damages from climate change and air
pollution. In more aggressive scenarios -- replacing 75% of cars with
EVs and increasing renewable energy generation -- savings could reach
as much as $70 billion annually.

"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," said Daniel Peters, who led the
study. "This highlights the potential of co-beneficial solutions to
climate change that not only curb greenhouse gas emissions but also
reduce the health burden of harmful air pollution." "From an engineering
and technological standpoint, people have been developing solutions to
climate change for years," added Northwestern's Daniel Horton, senior
author of the study. "But we need to rigorously assess these solutions.

This study presents a nuanced look at EVs and energy generation and found
that EV adoption not only reduces greenhouse gases but saves lives."
The study was published online last week (August 13) in the journal
GeoHealth.

During this research, Peters was an undergraduate researcher in Horton's laboratory at Northwestern. He now works for the Environmental Defense
Fund.

Horton is an assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences.



==========================================================================
To conduct the study, Horton, Peters and their team looked at vehicle
fleet and emissions data from 2014. 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. Although the impact
of carbon emissions on the climate is well documented, combustion engines
also produce other harmful pollutants, such as particulate matter and the precursors to ground-level ozone. Such pollutants can trigger a variety
of health problems, including asthma, emphysema, chronic bronchitis and ultimately premature death.

After leaving tailpipes and smokestacks, pollutants interact with their environment, including background chemistry and meteorology.

"A good example is to look at nitrogen oxides (NOx), a group of chemicals produced by fossil-fuel combustion," Peters explained. "NOx itself is
damaging to respiratory health, but when it's exposed to sunlight and
volatile organic compounds in the atmosphere, ozone and particulate
matter can form." To account for these interactions, the researchers
used a chemistry-climate model developed at the Geophysical Fluid
Dynamics Laboratory. Jordan Schnell, a postdoctoral fellow in Horton's
lab, performed the model experiments that simultaneously simulate
the atmosphere's weather and chemistry, including how emissions from
combustion engines and power generation sources interact with each other
and other emissions sources in their environments.

With this model, the researchers simulated air pollutant changes
across the lower 48 states, based on different levels of EV adoption
and renewable energy generation. Then, they combined this information
with publicly available county health data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). This combination enabled the research team to
assess health consequences from the air quality changes caused by each electrification scenario.

The research team assigned dollar values to the avoided climate and
health damages that could be brought about by 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 attach a price
tag to long-term health, environmental and agricultural damages.

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

========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Northwestern_University. Original
written by Amanda Morris. Note: Content may be edited for style and
length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
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 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/08/200817123107.htm

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