(Press-News.org) Each year an estimated 1.2 million Chinese citizens die prematurely due to poor air quality. And public health consequences are particularly dire during extreme air quality events, such as infamous "Airpocalypse" winter haze episodes.
A team of Northwestern University researchers wondered if widespread adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) could help China avoid these deadly events. The answer? It depends.
In a new study, the researchers concluded air quality and public health benefits of EVs -- as well as their ability to reduce carbon emissions -- in China are dependent on the type of transport electrified and the composition of the electric grid.
The study was published today (Feb. 16) in the February 2021 issue of the journal Earth's Future.
"A significant fraction of China's electricity is currently sourced from the burning of coal, which is a very carbon intensive power source," said Jordan Schnell, the study's lead author. "When the coal-heavy power is used to charge light-duty vehicles, carbon emissions are reduced because of the efficiency of light-duty EVs. Heavy-duty electric vehicles require significantly more energy, so we see a net increase in carbon dioxide emissions. However, even when heavy-duty vehicle power is sourced entirely by coal-fired electricity, we still see air quality improvements because the on-road emission reductions outweigh what the power plants add. Fine particulate matter emissions, which are a main ingredient in haze, are reduced."
"We find that to achieve net co-benefits from heavy-duty EV adoption, the real sticking point in China's infrastructure lies in its power-generation sector. Greater adoption of emission-free renewable power generation is needed," said Northwestern's Daniel Horton, the study's senior author. "For light-duty vehicles the co-benefits are already there under the current infrastructure."
Horton is an assistant professor of Earth and planetary sciences in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. At the time of the research, Schnell was a postdoctoral fellow in Horton's laboratory. He is now a research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Pollutants come from a variety of sources, both natural and human-caused, and include emissions from transportation and power-generation facilities. Adoption of EVs reduces the emission of air pollutants and greenhouse gases from vehicle tailpipes, but the overall emissions budget must account for the shifting of emissions to the power plants used to charge EV batteries. Country-wide vehicle distribution and energy consumption also play roles in overall emissions profiles. Heavy-duty versus light-duty vehicles, for example, differ substantially, complicating the net outcome.
To reconcile these complicating factors, the researchers combined chemistry-climate modeling with emissions, weather and public health data. The researchers examined the air quality and climate benefits and tradeoffs of heavy-duty versus light-duty vehicle adoption using meteorological conditions from a notorious Airpocalypse event in January 2013. Unlike previous EV-air quality studies that focused on chronic exposure, the researchers focused on the acute public health impacts of exposure to this short, but extremely hazardous, haze event.
The researchers discovered that EV adoption could have a modest role in reducing the public health burden of individual Airpocalypse events, with the extent depending on the type of vehicle electrified. They also found the realization of public health and climate co-benefits depended on the addition of emission-free renewable energy to the electric grid.
During the January 2013 extreme pollution episode, poisonous haze hung over much of China, including the major population centers of Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei. Acute exposure to the record-high levels of fine particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide increased pollution-related respiratory diseases, heart disease and stroke, which the researchers estimate led to approximately 32,000 premature deaths and $14.7 billion in health care costs.
To assess the consequences of EV adoption, in one model simulation scenario the researchers replaced roughly 40% of China's heavy-duty vehicles (such as construction equipment, long-haul trucks and buses) with electrified versions. An alternative scenario simulated the replacement of roughly 40% of China's light-duty vehicles with electric alternatives. The energy needed to charge the EV batteries is equivalent in both scenarios and is sourced from power-generation facilities on the grid. Emissions of greenhouse gases and air pollutants are determined according to the battery-charging load and power plant profile.
The research team found that electrifying 40% of heavy-duty vehicles consistently improved air quality -- avoiding up to 562 premature deaths. It did not, however, reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Light-duty EV adoption, on the other hand, reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 2 megatons but had more modest air quality benefits.
To drive home this point, the researchers provided an additional scenario comparison. When all traffic emissions are removed from the 2013 event, air quality improvements lead to a 6% decrease in acute premature mortality. When all power-sector emissions are removed, however, acute premature mortality declines 24%.
"Overall, we found that EV-induced pollution changes and avoided premature deaths were modest for the extreme event," Schnell said. "But air quality will improve more drastically as the power-generation sector moves away from fossil fuel-fired electricity."
INFORMATION:
The study, "Potential for electric vehicle adoption to mitigate extreme air quality events in China," was supported by the Ubben Program for Carbon and Climate Science and the U.S. National Science Foundation (grant number CBET-1848683). The research team included scientists from Northwestern, the Environmental Defense Fund, the U.S. EPA, Tsinghua University, UC Irvine, Fudan University and Boston University.
As most of us learned in school, plants use sunlight to synthesize carbon dioxide (CO2) and water into carbohydrates in a process called photosynthesis. But nature's "factories" don't just provide us with food -- they also generate insights into how ecosystems will react to a changing climate and carbon-filled atmosphere.
Because of their ability to make valuable products from organic compounds like CO2, plants are known as "primary producers." Gross primary production (GPP), which quantifies the rate of CO2 fixation in plants through photosynthesis, is a key metric to track the health and performance of any plant-based ecosystem.
A research team with the U.S. Department of Energy's Center for ...
DAVIS, Calif., Feb 16, 2021 - Researchers publishing in the peer-review journal Frontiers in Pediatrics report that pre-term infants fed Bifidobacterium longum subsp. infantis (activated B. infantis EVC001) experienced significantly lower level of intestinal inflammation, 62% less diaper rash, and required 62% fewer antibiotics- all of which are critical health indicators in neonatal care.
The study, END ...
A pair of UCR studies reveal that living with a romantic partner helps people feel more socially connected during COVID-19. But no other pandemic-era social dynamic carries notable benefits, the researchers found: not your kids, not kibitzing with your bestie on Facetime, and not your adorable-adoring pets.
"Research prior to the pandemic has long shown that partners are one of the strongest predictors of social connection and well-being," said UCR researcher Karynna Okabe-Miyamoto, lead co-author of the study, published recently in the journal Plos One. "And our research during the current COVID-19 pandemic has shown the same. Living with a partner uniquely buffered declines in social ...
Findings from a new Geisel-led study, published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, reveal that there is substantial variation across different regions of the country in the intensity of fracture-associated drug (FAD) use among long-term care facility residents, and that areas with greater use of these prescription drugs experience higher hip fracture rates.
In recent decades, the use of prescription medications has increased dramatically in the U.S. due to factors such as improvements in the ability to detect disease, expanding treatment options, and an aging population. For many Americans over age 65, these medications provide an effective means of managing disease and improving quality of life and longevity.
However, many commonly prescribed drugs--such ...
DALLAS, Feb. 15, 2021 -- Understanding the sex differences in cardiovascular disease presentation and outcomes remains a major research priority demonstrated by the record number of submissions for this year's Go Red for Women® special issue of the American Heart Association's flagship journal Circulation, published online today. Circulation editors said more than 100 manuscripts were submitted this year, the most ever in the five years in which the current editorial board has published the special issue.
"Undeniably, cardiovascular disease remains the number one killer of women around the world, taking the lives of 1 in 3 women. Even one life lost is too many, because we know much of heart disease and stroke is preventable and treatable," said Circulation Editor-in-Chief ...
Ithaca, N.Y. - At a glacier near the South Pole, earth scientists have found evidence of a quiet, slow-motion fault slip that triggers strong, fast-slip earthquakes many miles away, according to Cornell University research published in Science Advances.
During an earthquake, a fast slip happens when energy builds up underground and is released quickly along a fault. Blocks of earth rapidly slide against one another.
However, at an Antarctic glacier called Whillans Ice Plain, the earth scientists show that "slow slips" precede dozens of large magnitude 7 earthquakes. "We found that there is almost always a precursory 'slow slip' before an earthquake," ...
WHAT
Gliomas are common brain tumors that comprise about one third of all cancers of the nervous system. In a study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), researchers tested a novel combination treatment approach on mice with tumors with characteristics similar to human astrocytomas--a type of slow-growing glioma--and found tumor regression in 60 percent of the mice treated. These encouraging results, published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, could be the first step toward developing a treatment for this type of brain cancer.
Led by senior authors Maria Castro, Ph.D. and Pedro Lowenstein, M.D., Ph.D. along with a team of researchers at the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Centerb in Ann Arbor specifically ...
High levels of public support for strict measures to control COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic did not reflect high levels of public trust in the UK government's honesty, transparency or motives, suggests a new study published in PLOS One.
The 'mixed-methods' project, a collaboration between the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and University College London (UCL), involved collecting data from more than 9,000 adults living in the UK using an online survey.
It found that during the first wave of COVID-19 (April 2020) 95% of participants were in support of the government having powers to enforce behaviour change. However, only around half (52%) thought that the government was actually doing a good job of controlling COVID-19. Even fewer (36%) thought ...
New research has found that a group of genes that reduces the risk of developing severe COVID-19 by around 20% is inherited from Neanderthals
These genes, located on chromosome 12, code for enzymes that play a vital role in helping cells destroy the genomes of invading viruses
The study suggests that enzymes produced by the Neanderthal variant of these genes are more efficient which helps protect against severe COVID-19
This genetic variant was passed to humans around 60,000 years ago via interbreeding between modern humans and Neanderthals
The genetic variant has increased in frequency over the last millennium and is now found ...
Researchers from Skoltech and their colleagues have demonstrated that nanoengineered biodegradable microcapsules can guide the development of hippocampal neurons in an in vitro experiment. The microcapsules deliver nerve growth factor, a peptide necessary for neuron growth. The paper describing this work was published in the journal Pharmaceutics.
Many neurodegenerative conditions that can lead to severe disorders are associated with depleted levels of growth factors in the brain - neuropeptides that help neurons grow, proliferate and survive. Some clinical studies of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases have shown that delivering these growth factors to specific degenerating neurons can have a therapeutic effect. ...
