Grantee Research Project Results

2005 Progress Report: A Long Term Integrated Framework Linking Urban Development, Demographic Trends and Technology Changes to Stationary and Mobile Source Emissions

EPA Grant Number: R831841
Title: A Long Term Integrated Framework Linking Urban Development, Demographic Trends and Technology Changes to Stationary and Mobile Source Emissions
Investigators: Anas, Alex , Hewings, Geoffrey
Institution: The State University of New York at Buffalo , University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
EPA Project Officer: Chung, Serena
Project Period: November 1, 2004 through October 31, 2007 (Extended to October 31, 2010)
Project Period Covered by this Report: November 1, 2004 through October 31, 2005
Project Amount: $675,000
RFA: Regional Development, Population Trend, and Technology Change Impacts on Future Air Pollution Emissions (2004) RFA Text | Recipients Lists
Research Category: Climate Change , Air

Objective:

The project is developing an integrated modeling package, a tool for testing trends and policies that together determine future emission levels. The precise aims of the model integration effort targeted by the project are as follows:

We seek a tool capable of producing long-term (25- to 50 -year) projections of stationary- and mobile-source emissions in a metropolitan area. The way emission models are used is at best accurate for short horizons, taking as given local projections of local economic activity and population change. Instead of simply extrapolating these local trends, we seek to explain them by modeling the fundamental behavioral relationships among individuals and firms and by linking these underlying economic relationships to secular national and international trends in population, economic development, and technological changes relevant to emissions. Among the specific demographic trends to be examined are the graying of the population, reductions in household size, and international immigration. We also will examine the possibility of the continued deindustrialization of U.S. manufacturing and its impact on a metropolitan area with considerable manufacturing using the Chicago metropolitan statistical area (MSA). We will consider new technologies likely to impact emissions, such as electric vehicles and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, as well as electricity/energy production with a higher renewable fuel mix under higher sustained energy prices.

The proposed modeling framework is a dynamic computable general equilibrium model(DCGEM) for a metropolitan area based on principles of economic behavior that can be calibrated well from existing data. The sub- models are: (1) the Regional Economy and Land Use (RELU) model developed at the University at Buffalo, that treats the location, production, and transportation decisions of both businesses and consumers and the land development decisions of developers under a variety of government taxes and subsidies; (2) TRAN, a model of highway transit modal choice and congested travel conditions on highway networks developed at the University at Buffalo; (3) a model of the energy/electricity sector and its relation to demand from industrial production, residential use, and vehicular transportation to be developed in this project; and (4) models of emissions from mobile and stationary sources including those from production outside the electricity sector. We will interface these models to establish feedbacks among them consistently with microeconomic theory so that they will allow simulation of the workings of the Chicago regional economy.

The research will provide a tool that is portable from one metropolitan area to another. It will help identify the policies or trends that are the most effective in reducing emissions and specify how quickly and at what cost. It will determine whether the benefits of two policies or planning actions are sub-additive or super-additive. Hence, it could help direct future research and provide guidance to future policy initiatives that are economically and politically viable. Application of the model to other regions in the future would increase understanding of whether the policy actions should vary among metropolitan regions or whether the same policies are effective everywhere.

Progress Summary:

The project’s accomplishments to date are:

(1) Development of the TRAN model and integration of the RELU model with the TRAN model for a representation of the Chicago MSA consisting of 15 geographic zones spanning the city, the suburbs, and the exurban area ; 4 industries (agriculture, manufacturing, business services, and retail trade) ; 4 consumer income quartiles ; 4 building types (single-family residential, multiple family residential, commercial, and industrial) ; and undeveloped land and an aggregated representation of the highway network. The total number of equations solved by RELU-TRAN is 656. The model is capable of predicting the effects of changes in transportation capacities, land use policies, a variety of taxes, as well as in exogenous trends of population increase, export expansion, and improved industrial productivity on the regional economy, transportation, and land use changes at the metropolitan level.

As explained in the “Objectives ” section above, a model such as RELU-TRAN that simulates the working of the regional economy, its land use, and travel is the centerpiece in an effort to correctly forecast emissions in urban areas. Because emissions are a by-product of economic activity, they cannot be forecast well unless the underlying economic activity is forecast properly. Because RELU-TRAN is a model that relies on the state-of-the-art theory in the urban economics and transportation fields, it plays a key role in the assembly of models that the project aims to develop.

(2) The demographic sub- model also has been completed and requires only some minor adjustments. The purpose of the demographic sub- model is to provide RELU, which currently is based on individual consumers, with a household structure on the demand side. We have developed a model that divides people into 33 demographic cohorts. Each household consists of either one or two adults and a household age is assigned to it. Households age and have children (fertility) and can either split up or adults can merge into a household. The equations of the model have been developed and the model has been calibrated from Chicago data. The model is designed to capture/forecast the ag ing of the population and the changing of household sizes.

(3) In the case of the vehicle-choice sub- model, although the equations are developed, they need some simplification and adaptation. Once this is done, considerable work is required to implement this model, to code it within RELU-TRAN, to calibrate the model equations, and to retest the equilibration procedures of RELU-TRAN.

There are many examples of practical applications of the model assembly that is being developed. One is the use of aggressive land development restrictions to limit urban sprawl and the expansion of low-density suburban areas. Such policies would, in the long run, result in higher density developments in the built-up areas, resulting also in lower vehicle miles traveled, more traffic congestion, and more transit use. This in turn, would alter energy/electricity consumption by residences and by vehicles (depending also on the types of vehicles being used as the vehicle fleet changes via car ownership decisions). Emissions, in turn, will be affected. The assembly of models would trace all of these effects, but it also would be able to quantify other costs and benefits of the aggressive land use policies, such as higher rents and other price distortions in the markets for labor and urban products.

Future Activities:

The objectives for Year 2 of the project consist of expanding the work on the model assembly by completing the calibration of the demographic sub-model, developing the vehicle choice sub-model within RELU-TRAN and the energy/electricity industry sub-model, and then properly integrating these sub-models into RELU-TRAN and recalibrating RELU-TRAN.

What remains is the completion of the vehicle-choice and the energy/electricity sub-models and their integration with the demographic, energy/electricity, vehicle choice, and emission sub-models. This will open the way for the policy testing to begin and occupy us in the last year of the project.

Journal Articles on this Report : 1 Displayed | Download in RIS Format

Publications Views
Other project views:	All 24 publications	13 publications in selected types	All 8 journal articles

Publications
Type	Citation	Project	Document Sources
Journal Article	Anas A, Rhee HJ. Curbing excess sprawl with congestion tolls and urban boundaries. Regional Science and Urban Economics 2006;36(4):510-541.	R831841 (2005) R831841 (2006)	Full-text: Science Direct Full Text Exit Abstract: Science Direct Abstract Exit

Supplemental Keywords:

air, air quality, analytical, behavioral models, business location, clean technologies, consumer behavior, cost-benefit analysis, decision making, demand for electricity, demographic change, dynamic computable general equilibrium model, DCGE modeling economic behavior, economics, electric vehicles, electricity production, emissions, EMME/2, environmental regulation, future emissions, general equilibrium, global change, greenhouse gas, greenhouse gases, housing location, hydrogen vehicles, industrial location, infrastructure, land use, land use modeling, land use policies, long run, long-run effects, long term, long-term impact, long-term effects, manufacturing, mobile source, mobile sources, modeling, motor vehicle emissions, nitrogen oxides, ozone, particulate matter, particulates, preferences, public policy, regional development, residential location, sensitivity analysis, smart growth policies, social science, socioeconomic, stationary source, stationary sources, technological change, traffic congestion, transportation, transportation infrastructure, transportation modeling, travel demand, travel pattern, uncertainty, urban development, vehicle emissions, vehicle miles traveled, vehicle ownership, vehicular technology, VMT, VOC, Illinois, IL, Midwest, Chicago MSA,, RFA, Scientific Discipline, Air, Air Quality, Environmental Chemistry, climate change, Air Pollution Effects, mobile sources, Environmental Monitoring, Ecological Risk Assessment, Ecology and Ecosystems, Urban and Regional Planning, Atmosphere, ecosystem models, infrastructure systems, traffic, engine exhaust, modeling regional scale ozone, vehicle emissions, human activities, motor vehicle emissions, Emissions Inventory Modeling System, air quality models, ozone, automotive emissions, traffic patterns, automobiles, automotive exhaust, green house gas concentrations, modeling, mobile source emissions, emissions impact, atmospheric pollutant loads, tropospheric ozone, regional emissions model, global warming, predicting ecological response, climate variability, community structure, Global Climate Change, ambient air pollution

Relevant Websites:

http://www.acsu.buffalo.edu/~alexanas/Current%20Project.html Exit

Progress and Final Reports:

Original Abstract

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.