Grantee Research Project Results
Final Report: Project 5: Projecting and Quantifying Future Changes in Socioeconomic Drivers of Air Pollution and its Health-Related Impacts
EPA Grant Number: R835872C005Subproject: this is subproject number 005 , established and managed by the Center Director under grant R835872
(EPA does not fund or establish subprojects; EPA awards and manages the overall grant for this center).
Center: Regional Air Pollution Mixtures
Center Director: Koutrakis, Petros
Title: Project 5: Projecting and Quantifying Future Changes in Socioeconomic Drivers of Air Pollution and its Health-Related Impacts
Investigators: Selin, Noelle Eckley , Barrett, Steven , Solomon, Susan , Reilly, John
Institution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
EPA Project Officer: Keating, Terry
Project Period: December 1, 2015 through November 30, 2020
RFA: Air, Climate And Energy (ACE) Centers: Science Supporting Solutions (2014) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Air , Climate Change , Urban Air Toxics , Heavy Metal Contamination of Soil/Water , Air Quality and Air Toxics , Airborne Particulate Matter Health Effects , Air Toxics , Particulate Matter
Objective:
Project 5 investigated future changes in regional air pollution characteristics resulting from technological and societal changes. We quantified the future implications of technologies and efficiency improvements in the energy and transportation sectors on regional differences in air pollution impacts. Selected case studies assessed, inter alia, the environmental and health benefits of choices in state and regional carbon policy implementation relevant to recently proposed carbon dioxide emission reductions from the energy sector. We examined the health-related benefits of reducing concentrations of ozone and particulate matter, as well as changing regional air pollution mixtures including air toxics.
Conclusions:
The research under this grant focused on assessing the impact of different policies and technologies on the future of US air quality, and in particular examining how decisions could mitigate or exacerbate disparities in exposure to air pollution across the US.
This has included a comprehensive analysis of how different sectors – including passenger vehicles, energy generation, and residential heating – have contributed to air pollution in the US and how this has changed over recent years (Dedoussi et al., 2020). Most importantly, the work of Dedoussi et al. (2020) showed how improvements in the energy sector have helped to improve public health – but that emissions from residential heating are causing growing air quality impacts across the US.
We also quantified how different technologies and policies have affected, and would likely affect, US public health, and how this compares to the costs of implementation. Looking at historical changes, we investigated the question of whether the historical rollout of wind power has improved air quality and related public health outcomes, finding that significant health benefits were achieved but that the effects on disparities across different populations were mixed (Qiu et al., 2022a). Further, this wind power could have had up to four times greater health benefit if it were used to displace the most damaging power plants. We also quantitatively analyzed the possible benefits associated with both proposed and implemented policy. We investigated the impact of Renewable Portfolio Standards in the US and potential strengthening of such standards, and found that regional benefits from air quality exceed costs (Dimanchev et al., 2019). We also investigated how different implementations and interpretations of the Clean Air Act to address climate change could affect anticipated air quality outcomes (Yuan et al., 2022).
A common feature of our research has been to try and understand not just how the “average” US citizen is affected, but what the disparities might be in exposure. This is most strongly highlighted by Picciano (2022), which evaluated the degree to which carbon policy can be optimized to minimize both health impacts and health impact disparities. We found that conventional carbon policies at the scale proposed by the Inflation Reduction Act would be effective in reducing overall air pollution exposure in the US. However, even if the targeted carbon reductions were chosen specifically to minimize disparities, the gap in relative exposure between white people and people of color would still widen.
A major focus of our work has been the energy sector, using state-of-the-art atmospheric modeling. Dedoussi et al. (2019) evaluated how generation from different feedstocks resulted in different “co-pollutant costs,” showing that these non-CO2 costs vary between states by an order of magnitude. Following from this work, Freese et al (in press) considered the consequences of a sudden nuclear shutdown scenario, similar to what has been occurring in countries such as Germany in response to the Fukushima incident. We showed that such a rapid nuclear shutdown in the US would result in air quality degradation across the US. We also showed that, if such a shutdown occurred simultaneously with a transition away from coal generation, then low-efficiency, high-impact power generators would become active and incur an even larger air quality penalty. This work highlighted the possibility of significant unintended consequences if energy policy is designed or implemented without considering the “co-pollutant” impacts.
Another focus has been to understand what can and cannot be understood from purely observational records. Qiu et al (2022b) showed the promise – and limitations – of purely statistical techniques in extracting the effects of meteorological variability and change from observed trends in air quality. This demonstrated that, even on synthetic data, pure regression methods cannot disentangle the effect of meteorology on air quality trends. This was reflected in our analysis of the unprecedented change in global activity associated with the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns, in which we found that emissions changes alone could not explain observed changes in US exposure to air pollution (Chossière et al., 2021).
Finally, we worked to develop new tools which could be applied directly by policy designers to understand the relationships between policy, emissions, climate, air quality, and public health. The Tool for Air Pollution Scenarios (TAPS) allows users to explore how different climate policy scenarios might affect air pollution-relevant emissions such as nitrogen oxides and soot, and the degree to which climate policy alone might not be sufficient to achieve our air pollution goals (Atkinson et al., 2022). Finally, we developed a new tool which can estimate in seconds how different climate and air quality emissions scenarios might interact in changing future air quality outcomes (Eastham et al., 2023). This is an important step towards allowing decision makers, business, or even members of the public to explore these questions directly without the need for expensive and inaccessible chemistry-climate models.
From the above research portfolio, an overarching finding is that climate policies can have substantial air quality benefits, but the magnitude of these benefits and the extent to which these benefits are achieved varies dramatically depending on technology and policy choices.
Journal Articles on this Report : 11 Displayed | Download in RIS Format
| Other subproject views: | All 28 publications | 15 publications in selected types | All 15 journal articles |
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| Other center views: | All 453 publications | 420 publications in selected types | All 419 journal articles |
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Chossiere G, Xu H, Dixit Y, Isaacs S, Eastham S, Allroggen F, Speth R, Barrett S. Air pollution impacts of COVID-19-related containment measures. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2021;7(21):eabe1178. |
R835872 (2020) R835872C005 (Final) |
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Picciano P, Qiu M, Eastham S, Yuan M, Reilly J, Selin N. Air quality related equity implications of US decarbonization policy. NATURE COMMUNICATIONS 2023;14(1) |
R835872 (Final) R835872C005 (Final) |
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Qiu M, Zigler C, Selin N. Impacts of wind power on air quality, premature mortality, and exposure disparities in the United States. SCIENCE ADVANCES 2022;8(48):eabn8762 |
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Qiu M, ZIgler C, Selin N. Statistical and machine learning methods for evaluating trends in air quality under changing meteorological conditions. ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS 2022;22(16):10551-10566. |
R835872 (2021) R835872C004 (Final) R835872C005 (Final) |
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Dedoussi IC, Allroggen F, Flanagan R, Hansen T, Taylor B, Barrett SR, Boyce JK. The co-pollutant cost of carbon emissions:an analysis of the US electric power generation sector. Environmental Research Letters 2019;14(9):094003. |
R835872 (2018) R835872 (2019) R835872 (2020) R835872C005 (Final) |
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Dimanchev EG, Paltsev S, Yuan M, Rothenberg D, Tessum CW, Marshall JD, Selin NE. Health co-benefits of sub-national renewable energy policy in the US. Environmental Research Letters 2019;14(8):085012 |
R835872 (2018) R835872 (2019) R835872C005 (Final) R835873 (2019) R835873 (Final) |
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Dedoussi IC, Eastham SD, Monier E, Barrett SR. Premature mortality related to United States cross-state air pollution. Nature 2020;578(7794):261-265. |
R835872 (2019) R835872C005 (Final) |
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Atkinson W, Eastham SD, Chen Y-HH, Morris J, Paltsev S, Schlosser CA and Selin NE. A tool for air pollution scenarios (TAPS v1.0) to enable global, long-term, and flexible study of climate and air quality policies. Geoscientific Model Development 2022; 15:7767-7789. |
R835872C005 (Final) |
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Yuan M, Barron AR, Selin NE, Picciano PD, Lucy E Metz, Reilly JM and Jacoby HD. Meeting U.S. greenhouse gas emissions goals with the international air pollution provision of the clean air act. Environ Res Lett 2022; 17. |
R835872C005 (Final) |
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Freese LM, Chossière GP, Eastham SD, Jenn A and Selin NE. Nuclear power generation phase-outs redistribute US air quality and climate-related mortality risk. Nature Energy 2023; 8:492-503. |
R835872C005 (Final) |
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Eastham SD, Monier E, Rothenberg D, Paltsev S and Selin NE. Rapid Estimation of Climate-Air Quality Interactions in Integrated Assessment Using a Response Surface Model. ACS Environ Au 2023; 3(3):153-163. |
R835872C005 (Final) |
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Relevant Websites:
Selin Group - Pollution, Impacts and Policy at MIT Exit
MIT Laboratory for Aviation and the Environment Exit
Progress and Final Reports:
Original AbstractMain Center Abstract and Reports:
R835872 Regional Air Pollution Mixtures Subprojects under this Center: (EPA does not fund or establish subprojects; EPA awards and manages the overall grant for this center).
R835872C001 Project 1: Regional Air Pollution Mixtures: The Past and Future Impacts of Emission Controls and Climate Change on Air Quality and Health
R835872C002 Project 2: Air Pollutant Mixtures in Eastern Massachusetts: Spatial Multi-resolution Analysis of Trends, Effects of Modifiable Factors, Climate and Particle-induced Mortality
R835872C003 Project 3: Causal Estimates of Effects of Regional and National Pollution Mixtures on Health: Providing Tools for Policy Makers
R835872C004 A Causal Inference Framework to Support Policy Decisions by Evaluating the Effectiveness of Past Air Pollution Control Strategies for the Entire United States
R835872C005 Project 5: Projecting and Quantifying Future Changes in Socioeconomic Drivers of Air Pollution and its Health-Related Impacts
The perspectives, information and conclusions conveyed in research project abstracts, progress reports, final reports, journal abstracts and journal publications convey the viewpoints of the principal investigator and may not represent the views and policies of ORD and EPA. Conclusions drawn by the principal investigators have not been reviewed by the Agency.
Project Research Results
15 journal articles for this subproject
Main Center: R835872
453 publications for this center
419 journal articles for this center