Potential air quality benefits from increased solar photovoltaic electricity generation in the Eastern United States

Abel, David; Holloway, Tracey; Harkey, Monica; Rrushaj, Arber; Brinkman, Gregory; Duran, Phillip L.; Janssen, M.; Denholm, Paul

doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2017.11.049

Cited by 30 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Four compare the co-benefits of different renewable energy deployments in various regions of the U.S. (79,81,83,86); two, the air quality co-benefits of renewable energy deployed across the continental United States (82,85). Emissions were quantified with data and analysis tools (83,85,86), a capacity expansion model (80,82), a production cost model (81,84) or an emissions inventory (79). Most use a reduced-form air quality model; only Abel et al (84) and Plachinski et al (80) use a full physics air quality model to evaluate energy efficiency and renewable energy benefits.…”

Section: Summary Of Published Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating Air Quality and Public Health Benefits in U.S. Decarbonization Strategies

Gallagher

Holloway

2020

Front. Public Health

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Research on air quality and human health "co-benefits" from climate mitigation strategies represents a growing area of policy-relevant scholarship. Compared to other aspects of climate and energy policy evaluation, however, there are still relatively few of these co-benefits analyses. This sparsity reflects a historical disconnect between research quantifying energy and climate, and research dealing with air quality and health. The air quality co-benefits of climate, clean energy, and transportation electrification policies are typically assessed with models spanning social, physical, chemical, and biological systems. This review article summarizes studies to date and presents methods used for these interdisciplinary analyses. Studies in the peer-reviewed literature (n = 26) have evaluated carbon pricing, renewable portfolio standards, energy efficiency, renewable energy deployment, and clean transportation. A number of major findings have emerged from these studies: [1] decarbonization strategies can reduce air pollution disproportionally on the most polluted days; [2] renewable energy deployment and climate policies offer the highest health and economic benefits in regions with greater reliance on coal generation; [3] monetized air quality health co-benefits can offset costs of climate policy implementation; [4] monetized co-benefits typically exceed the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) of renewable energies; [5] Electric vehicle (EV) adoption generally improves air quality on peak pollution days, but can result in ozone dis-benefits in urban centers due to the titration of ozone with nitrogen oxides. Drawing from these published studies, we review the state of knowledge on climate co-benefits to air quality and health, identifying opportunities for policy action and further research.

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Section: Summary Of Published Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Integrating Air Quality and Public Health Benefits in U.S. Decarbonization Strategies

Gallagher

Holloway

2020

Front. Public Health

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“…The climate and health benefits of the growth in RE has been assessed historically [12], marginal benefits of incremental increases have been assessed for past years [13], and the benefits of either specific project types or projects in specific regions has been assessed [9,10,12,14,15]. To build on this, we evaluate a series of RE projects at different sizes and across all regions of the US for the year 2017, using consistent methods to estimate benefits, and using health benefit modeling that incorporates seasonal differences in health impacts of emissions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Climate and health benefits of increasing renewable energy deployment in the United States*

Buonocore

Hughes

Michanowicz

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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The type, size, and location of renewable energy (RE) deployment dramatically affects benefits to climate and health. Here, we develop a ten-region model to assess the magnitude of health and climate benefits across the US We then use this model to assess the benefits of deploying varying capacities of wind, utility-scale solar photovoltaics (PV), and rooftop solar PV in different regions in the US-a total of 284 different scenarios. Total benefits ranged from $2.2 trillion for 3000 MW of wind in the Upper Midwest to $4.2 million for 100 MW of wind in California. Total benefits and highest cost effectiveness for CO 2 reduction were generally highest for RE deployment in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic US and lowest in California. Health was a substantial portion of total benefits in nearly all regions of the US Benefits were sensitive to methane leakage throughout the gas supply chain.

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“…Another option to reduce both carbon emissions and air-pollution-related health impacts would be to increase the portion of electricity generated by renewable sources like solar and wind. Studies show that the use of solar energy would reduce and has reduced fine particulates in the eastern US, especially on the highest concentration days [ 39 , 107 ]. Other options include demand response programs, building codes and standards, and conservation education.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is the first study to our knowledge to compare the impact of potential mid-century climate change on air quality with and without associated heat-driven changes in emissions from the electricity sector. This work advances the line of research characterizing health co-benefits from mitigation strategies [ 39 – 52 ] and the direct quantification of health damages from air pollution in a future climate [ 1 , 2 , 30 , 53 – 59 ]. This study builds upon a large body of epidemiological work relating air pollution and human health, including the studies utilized in the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program (BenMAP) [ 60 ].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Air-quality-related health impacts from climate change and from adaptation of cooling demand for buildings in the eastern United States: An interdisciplinary modeling study

et al. 2018

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BackgroundClimate change negatively impacts human health through heat stress and exposure to worsened air pollution, amongst other pathways. Indoor use of air conditioning can be an effective strategy to reduce heat exposure. However, increased air conditioning use increases emissions of air pollutants from power plants, in turn worsening air quality and human health impacts. We used an interdisciplinary linked model system to quantify the impacts of heat-driven adaptation through building cooling demand on air-quality-related health outcomes in a representative mid-century climate scenario.Methods and findingsWe used a modeling system that included downscaling historical and future climate data with the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model, simulating building electricity demand using the Regional Building Energy Simulation System (RBESS), simulating power sector production and emissions using MyPower, simulating ambient air quality using the Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model, and calculating the incidence of adverse health outcomes using the Environmental Benefits Mapping and Analysis Program (BenMAP). We performed simulations for a representative present-day climate scenario and 2 representative mid-century climate scenarios, with and without exacerbated power sector emissions from adaptation in building energy use. We find that by mid-century, climate change alone can increase fine particulate matter (PM2.5) concentrations by 58.6% (2.50 μg/m3) and ozone (O3) by 14.9% (8.06 parts per billion by volume [ppbv]) for the month of July. A larger change is found when comparing the present day to the combined impact of climate change and increased building energy use, where PM2.5 increases 61.1% (2.60 μg/m3) and O3 increases 15.9% (8.64 ppbv). Therefore, 3.8% of the total increase in PM2.5 and 6.7% of the total increase in O3 is attributable to adaptive behavior (extra air conditioning use). Health impacts assessment finds that for a mid-century climate change scenario (with adaptation), annual PM2.5-related adult mortality increases by 13,547 deaths (14 concentration–response functions with mean incidence range of 1,320 to 26,481, approximately US$126 billion cost) and annual O3-related adult mortality increases by 3,514 deaths (3 functions with mean incidence range of 2,175 to 4,920, approximately US$32.5 billion cost), calculated as a 3-month summer estimate based on July modeling. Air conditioning adaptation accounts for 654 (range of 87 to 1,245) of the PM2.5-related deaths (approximately US$6 billion cost, a 4.8% increase above climate change impacts alone) and 315 (range of 198 to 438) of the O3-related deaths (approximately US$3 billion cost, an 8.7% increase above climate change impacts alone). Limitations of this study include modeling only a single month, based on 1 model-year of future climate simulations. As a result, we do not project the future, but rather describe the potential damages from interactions arising between climate, energy use, and air quality.ConclusionsThis study exa...

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Potential air quality benefits from increased solar photovoltaic electricity generation in the Eastern United States

Cited by 30 publications

References 27 publications

Integrating Air Quality and Public Health Benefits in U.S. Decarbonization Strategies

Integrating Air Quality and Public Health Benefits in U.S. Decarbonization Strategies

Climate and health benefits of increasing renewable energy deployment in the United States*

Air-quality-related health impacts from climate change and from adaptation of cooling demand for buildings in the eastern United States: An interdisciplinary modeling study

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