Over the past 30-40 years, vehicle tailpipe emissions of particulate matter (PM), nitrogen oxides (NO x), carbon monoxide (CO), and hydrocarbons (HCs) have decreased significantly. Advanced emission after-treatment technologies have been developed for gasoline and diesel vehicles to meet increasingly stringent regulations, yielding absolute emission reductions from the fleet despite increased vehicle travel. As a result of mobile and stationary source emission controls, air quality has generally improved substantially in cities across the US and Europe. Emission regulations (such as Tier 3 in the US, LEV III in California, and Euro 6 rules in the EU) will lead to even lower vehicle emissions and further improvements in air quality. We review historical vehicle emission and air quality trends, discuss the future outlook for air quality, and note that modern internal combustion engine vehicles typically have lower exhaust emissions than battery electric vehicle upstream emissions. As vehicle manufacturers and city officials grapple with questions about future mobility in cities, we raise the question "how low should we go?" for future vehicle criteria emissions. The answer to this question will have profound implications for automotive and fuel companies and for the future economic and environmental health of urban areas.

Electrification of transportation offers clear national energy security benefits but unclear climate benefits. With the current heterogeneity of grid electricity mix in China, greenhouse gas (GHG) benefits of battery electric vehicles (BEVs) vary dramatically with location. Currently, compared to baseline conventional gasoline vehicles, BEVs in north and northeastern Chinese provinces have very modest (∼10–20%) well-to-wheel (WTW) GHG benefits, whereas BEVs in southern provinces have substantial benefits (∼50%). With the expected transition to a more renewable electricity mix documented here, regional effects will largely disappear and the benefits of BEVs will be substantial (∼60–70% lower than current internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) and ∼10–40% lower than 2030 advanced hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs)) across the whole of China by 2030. GHG emissions from BEVs in Chinese cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing, and Pearl River Delta) and United States cities and regions (New York; Washington, DC; Chicago; New England; Texas; and California) in 2015 and 2030 are evaluated and compared. BEVs in Chinese cities will still have substantially higher WTW GHG emissions than those in New York, New England, and California in 2030.

We have studied the possible association of daily mortality with ambient pollutant concentrations (PM10, CO, O3, SO2, NO2, and fine [PM2.5] and coarse PM) and weather variables (temperature and dew point) in the Pittsburgh, PA, area for two age groups--less than 75, and 75 and over--for the 3-year period of 1989-1991. Correlation functions among pollutant concentrations show important seasonal dependence, and this fact necessitates the use of seasonal models to better identify the link between ambient pollutant concentrations and daily mortality. An analysis of the seasonal model results for the younger-age group reveals significant multicollinearity problems among the highly correlated concentrations of PM10, CO, and NO2 (and O3 in spring and summer), and calls into question the rather consistent results of the single- and multi-pollutant non-seasonal models that show a significant positive association between PM10 and daily mortality. For the older-age group, dew point consistently shows a significant association with daily mortality in all models. Collinearity problems appear in the multi-pollutant seasonal and non-seasonal models such that a significant, positive PM10 coefficient is accompanied by a significant, negative coefficient of another ambient pollutant, and the identity of this other pollutant changes with season. The PM2.5 data set is half that of PM10. Identical-model runs for both data sets reveal instability in the pollutant coefficients, especially for the younger age group. The concern for the instability of the pollutant coefficients due to a small signal-to-noise ratio makes it impossible to ascertain credibly the relative associations of the fine- and coarse-particle modes with daily mortality. In this connection, we call for caution in the interpretation of model results for causal inference when the models use fully or partially estimated PM values to fill large data gaps.

The approximately 100 million tonne per year increase in the use of corn to produce ethanol in the U.S. over the past 10 years, and projections of greater future use, have raised concerns that reduced exports of corn (and other agricultural products) and higher commodity prices would lead to land-use changes and, consequently, negative environmental impacts in other countries. The concerns have been driven by agricultural and trade models, which project that large-scale corn ethanol production leads to substantial decreases in food exports, increases in food prices, and greater deforestation globally. Over the past decade, the increased use of corn for ethanol has been largely matched by the increased corn harvest attributable mainly to increased yields. U.S. exports of corn, wheat, soybeans, pork, chicken, and beef either increased or remained unchanged. Exports of distillers' dry grains (DDG, a coproduct of ethanol production and a valuable animal feed) increased by more than an order of magnitude to 9 million tonnes in 2010. Increased biofuel production may lead to intensification (higher yields) and extensification (more land) of agricultural activities. Intensification and extensification have opposite impacts on land use change. We highlight the lack of information concerning the magnitude of intensification effects and the associated large uncertainties in assessments of the indirect land use change associated with corn ethanol.

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