Download or read book Quantifying Air Quality Human Health and Climate Impacts from Energy Systems written by Maninder Pal Singh Thind and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Atmospheric emissions from the energy sector contribute to air pollution and climate change. Harmful gases in ambient air degrade air quality; exposure to those gases can lead to health impacts locally and regionally. Greenhouse gases perturb the energy balance of the atmosphere, leading to higher temperatures (global warming) and thus impacting climate at a global scale. Air pollution is linked to exposure disparities among demographic groups (race, income). This dissertation explores air quality, health and climate impacts, and environmental injustice from emissions originating from energy systems. The overarching goals of this research work are to (i) quantify and compare metrics for greenhouse and noxious pollutants to evaluate environmental consequences from interventions, (ii) develop metrics and tools to quantify air quality and human health impacts from point and line sources, (iii) explore distributions of health impacts from air pollution by race, income, and geography, and (iv) demonstrate the use a reduced-complexity air quality model to quantify impacts from multiple energy systems. In this research, I focus on the fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. PM2.5 is the air pollutant that produces the largest monetized human health impacts in the United States (U.S.) and worldwide. PM2.5 can be directly emitted from combustion or other activities (primary PM2.5) or formed from precursors such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs), sulfur dioxide (SO2), oxides of nitrogen (NOx), and ammonia (NH3) (secondary PM2.5). Concentrations of PM2.5 species in the atmosphere are controlled by emissions, transport, chemistry, and deposition processes. The health impacts are a function of concentrations and the exposed population. Previous research has demonstrated the importance of fine spatial resolution for identifying and quantifying exposure disparities (environmental justice). I used a novel spatial air quality model called "Intervention Model for Air Pollution (InMAP)," combined with epidemiological research concerning air pollution and human health, to estimate health impacts of PM2.5 at a fine resolution. To understand climate impacts, I focus on carbon dioxide (CO2) which is a major greenhouse gas (81% of the total greenhouse gas emissions) emitted from complete combustion of carbon-containing fuels. This dissertation consists of three original studies focused on two energy sectors in the United States (U.S.): electricity generation and freight transportation. The methods employed in this work are based on two approaches: data-driven regression analysis and mechanistic air quality modeling using InMAP. Chapter 2 presents the data-driven empirical approach. Using linear regression between hourly changes in generation and emissions data, I investigate differences between average emission factors (AEFs) and average marginal emission factors (AMEFs) for CO2, SO2, and NOx at different spatial and temporal scales for a Midwest U.S. power market called the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO). AEFs and AMEFs are two commonly used metrics for estimating emission benefits from energy-efficiency strategies. This is the first study that estimates AEFs and AMEFs for a U.S. Regional Transmission Organization (RTO). I find, for example, that marginal emission factors are generally higher during late night and early morning compared to afternoons. In general, AEFs tend to be larger than AMEFs (typical difference: ~20%), and thus may overestimate emission impacts from interventions in the power sector, relative to using AMEFs. Chapters 3 and 4 present a mechanistic modeling approach for investigating air quality and human health impacts from PM2.5 emissions. Chapter 3 presents a study that estimates exposure to and health impacts of PM2.5 from electricity generation in the U.S., for each of the seven Regional Transmission Organizations (RTOs), for each US state, by income, and by race. This research is the first national-scale investigation of environmental justice aspects of total PM2.5 from electricity generation. I find that average exposures are the highest for blacks, followed by non-Latino whites. Exposures for remaining groups (e.g., Asians, Native Americans, Latinos) are somewhat lower. Levels of disparity differ by state and RTO. Exposures are higher for lower-income than for higher-income, but disparities are larger by race than by income. Geographically, I observe large differences between where electricity is generated and where people experience the resulting PM2.5 health consequences; some states are net exporters of health impacts, other are net importers. Chapter 4 presents a study that investigates environmental health and climate impacts from inter-state road, rail, water, and air freight transportation in the U.S. This is the first detailed study to compare health, environmental justice, and climate impacts of four freight modes, studying each route separately. Average impacts per unit mass shipped are as follows. For all three impacts studied (PM2.5 health effects, racial-ethnic disparities in PM2.5 exposure, CO2 emissions), impacts are greatest for aircraft. Among non-aircraft modes: PM2.5 health effects are largest for rail, intermediate for barge, and lowest for truck; PM2.5 exposure disparities are largest for rail and are lower for truck and barge; climate impacts are largest for truck, intermediate for barge, and lowest for rail. Inter-state freight movement in the U.S. disproportionately impacts white non-Latinos relative to other racial-ethnic groups. This dissertation presents work to investigate air quality, health and climate impacts, and environmental justice-related issues from electricity generation and freight transportation. This work can be extended to other specific sectors of the economy and can be useful to scientists, planners, and policymakers to estimate environmental benefits of energy conservation programs and create policies that address environmental injustice. The metrics developed in this work can be applied by researchers to new electricity and transportation scenarios to understand their impacts and benefits.

Download or read book Air Quality and Human Health written by Pratap Kumar Padhy and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Monitoring Ambient Air Quality for Health Impact Assessment written by World Health Organization. Regional Office for Europe and published by WHO Regional Office Europe. This book was released on 1999 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A guide to the principles and methods of air quality assessment aimed at measuring population exposure to ambient air pollutants and estimating the effects on health. Addressed to policy-makers as well as scientists engaged in air quality monitoring, the book responds to the failure of most monitoring systems to provide data that are useful in estimating and managing threats to health. The need for exposure data on populations at special risk is also addressed. Throughout, emphasis is placed on methods of monitoring and modelling that are cost-effective, targeted, and appropriate to local and national conditions. The report has six chapters. The first introduces WHO activities related to air quality management and explains the need for monitoring systems capable of assessing health impact. The types of information required for health impact assessment are described in chapter two, which outlines several methods of monitoring and modelling that can be used to measure the level and distribution of exposure to air pollutants in populations, identify population groups with high exposure, and estimate adverse effects on health. Chapter three formulates a general concept of air quality assessment, offering advice on principles for designing a monitoring network, interpreting and reporting data, and solving problems with quality assurance. Also included is a comparison of the advantages, disadvantages, and costs of different methods for air quality monitoring. Against this background, the fourth and most extensive chapter describes specific methods for the monitoring of carbon monoxide, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, particulate matter, benzene, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, lead, and atmospheric cadmium. Monitoring strategies for each pollutant are presented according to a standard format, which covers health effects, sources and exposure patterns, monitoring methods, recommended strategies for monitoring and assessment, and a practical example. The remaining chapters offer advice on the collation, analysis, interpretation, and dissemination of data, and summarize the main conclusions and recommendations of the report. Detailed technical guidelines for the use of various methods and models are provided in a series of annexes. The report also reproduces the newly revised WHO air quality guidelines for Europe.

Download or read book Life Cycle Analysis of Energy Systems written by Bent Sørensen and published by Royal Society of Chemistry. This book was released on 2011-06-06 with total page 347 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life-cycle assessment of new energy solutions plays an important role in discussions about global warming mitigation options and the evaluation of concrete energy production and conversion installations. This book starts by describing the methodology of life-cycle analysis and life-cycle assessment of new energy solutions. It then goes on to cover, in detail, a range of applications to individual energy installations, national supply systems, and to the global energy system in a climate impact context. Coverage is not limited to issues related to commercial uses by consultants according to ISO norms. It also emphasizes life-cycle studies as an open-ended scientific discipline embracing economic issues of cost, employment, equity, foreign trade balances, ecological sustainability, and a range of geo-political and social issues. A wealth of applications are described and a discussion on the results obtained in each study is included. Example areas are fossil and nuclear power plants, renewable energy systems, and systems based on hydrogen or batteries as energy carriers. The analysis is continued to the end-users of energy, where energy use in transportation, industry and home are scrutinized for their life-cycle impacts. Biofuel production and the combustion of firewood in home fireplaces and stoves are amongst the issues discussed. A central theme of the book is global warming. The impacts of greenhouse gas emissions are meticulously mapped at a depth far beyond that of the IPCC reports. A novel and surprising finding is that more lives will be saved than lost as a direct consequence of a warmer climate. After a 2oC increase in temperature, the reduction in death rates in areas with cold winters would outweigh the increase in the death rates in hot climates. However, this is only one of several impacts from greenhouse gases, and the remaining ones are still overwhelmingly negative. The fact that some population groups may benefit from higher temperatures (notably the ones most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions) whilst others (who did not contribute much to the problem) suffer is one of the main points of the book. The book is suitable as a university textbook and as a reference source for engineers, managers and public bodies responsible for planning and licensing.

Download or read book Air Quality Impacts and Benefits Under U S Policy for Air Pollution Climate Change and Clean Energy written by Rebecca Kaarina Saari and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 94 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Policies that reduce greenhouse gas emissions can also reduce outdoor levels of air pollutants that harm human health by targeting the same emissions sources. However, the design and scale of these policies can affect the distribution and size of air quality impacts, i.e. who gains from pollution reductions and by how much. Traditional air quality impact analysis seeks to address these questions by estimating pollution changes with regional chemical transport models, then applying economic valuations directly to estimates of reduced health risks. In this dissertation, I incorporate and build on this approach by representing the effect of pollution reductions across regions and income groups within a model of the energy system and economy. This new modeling framework represents how climate change and clean energy policy affect pollutant emissions throughout the economy, and how these emissions then affect human health and economic welfare. This methodology allows this thesis to explore the effect of policy design on the distribution of air quality impacts across regions and income groups in three studies. The first study compares air pollutant emissions under state-level carbon emission limits with regional or national implementation, as proposed in the U.S. EPA Clean Power Plan. It finds that the flexible regional and national implementations lower the costs of compliance more than they adversely affect pollutant emissions. The second study compares the costs and air quality co-benefits of two types of national carbon policy: an energy sector policy, and an economy-wide cap-and-trade program. It finds that air quality impacts can completely offset the costs of a cost-effective carbon policy, primarily through gains in the eastern United States. The final study extends the modeling framework to be able to examine the impacts of ozone policy with household income. It finds that inequality in exposure makes ozone reductions relatively more valuable for low income households. As a whole, this work contributes to literature connecting actions to impacts, and identifies an ongoing need to improve our understanding of the connection between economic activity, policy actions, and pollutant emissions.

Download or read book Air Quality written by Marco Ragazzi and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2016-12-08 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title includes a number of Open Access chapters. This new compendium provides a nuanced look at monitoring, measuring, and modeling air quality pollution in conjunction with its effects on public health and the environment. Air pollution has been proven to be a major environmental risk to health. Protecting and improving air quality requires knowledge about the types and levels of pollutants being emitted. It also requires the best possible measurement and monitoring capabilities. The chapters in this volume serve as a foundation for monitoring, measuring, and modeling air pollution.

Download or read book Air Quality Research Using Remote Sensing written by Maria João Costa and published by Mdpi AG. This book was released on 2022-12-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Air pollution is a worldwide environmental hazard that poses serious consequences not only for human health and the climate but also for agriculture, ecosystems, and cultural heritage, among other factors. According to the WHO, there are 8 million premature deaths every year as a result of exposure to ambient air pollution. In addition, more than 90% of the world's population live in areas where the air quality is poor, exceeding the recommended limits. On the other hand, air pollution and the climate co-influence one another through complex physicochemical interactions in the atmosphere that alter the Earth's energy balance and have implications for climate change and the air quality. It is important to measure specific atmospheric parameters and pollutant compound concentrations, monitor their variations, and analyze different scenarios with the aim of assessing the air pollution levels and developing early warning and forecast systems as a means of improving the air quality and safeguarding public health. Such measures can also form part of efforts to achieve a reduction in the number of air pollution casualties and mitigate climate change phenomena. This book contains contributions focusing on remote sensing techniques for evaluating air quality, including the use of in situ data, modeling approaches, and the synthesis of different instrumentations and techniques. The papers published in this book highlight the importance and relevance of air quality studies and the potential of remote sensing, particularly that conducted from Earth observation platforms, to shed light on this topic.

Download or read book Advancing the Framework for Assessing Causality of Health and Welfare Effects to Inform National Ambient Air Quality Standard Reviews written by National Academies of Sciences Engineering and Medicine and published by . This book was released on 2023-07-14 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As part of its responsibilities under the Clean Air Act, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency sets National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for the air pollutants carbon monoxide, lead, oxides of nitrogen, particulate matter, ozone, and sulfur dioxide. EPA uses a weight of evidence approach to evaluate evidence from scientific studies and describe the causal relationships between these criteria pollutants and any adverse impacts on human health and on public welfare - including impacts on wildlife, water, forests, agriculture, and climate. The evaluation, called an Integrated Science Assessment, is used to inform standards setting associated with the criteria pollutants. This report, produced at the request of EPA, describes EPAs and several other frameworks for inferring causality of health or welfare effects and the characteristics of evidence useful for forming a causal determination. The report concludes that EPAs causal framework is effective, reliable, and scientifically defensible, provided that key scientific questions are identified and a range of necessary expertise is engaged. More transparency in how EPA integrates evidence could improve confidence in their determinations, and more guidance is needed in the framework on how evidence should be examined for vulnerable groups (e.g., human sub-populations) and sensitive ecosystems or species.

Download or read book Data and Model Improvements to Quantify the Impacts of Air Pollution in Health and Environmental Justice written by Mariana Alifa and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Quantifying Air Quality Impacts of State Energy Office Projects written by Sarah L. Mazur and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 78 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Quantifying a Range of Global Air Pollution Projections and Health Impacts Under the Paris Agreement s Temperature Targets written by William Ayres Atkinson and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Air pollution is a key sustainability challenge with similar emissions sources to anthropogenic climate change -- making it critical to assess the effect of climate and air quality actions on pollutant emissions, the resulting health impacts, and broader sustainability metrics. This thesis responds to these needs by developing a new Tool for Air Pollution Scenarios (TAPS) and applying it to example policy effects on emissions, health impacts, and alternative metrics that are consistent with a stock-based sustainability framework of inclusive wealth. In Chapter 2, we develop and implement TAPS with three components: recent global anthropogenic emissions inventories, emitting activity scenarios from the MIT Economic Projection and Policy Analysis model, and emissions intensity trends based on recent scenario data from the Greenhouse Gas - Air Pollution Interactions and Synergies model. Initial results show the limits of existing policy and the importance of different policy levers for different pollutants - including climate action to reduce fossil fuel related air pollutants (such as sulfur and nitrogen oxides), and other air quality controls to reduce pollutants such as ammonia and organic carbon. Chapter 3 connects the tool's emissions results to health impacts, focusing on the difference between two pollution control scenarios under the common assumption that the Paris Agreement's climate targets are met. We find major differences in ambient fine particulate matter concentrations as well as impacts on premature mortality and morbidity - showing that climate action alone does not guarantee a clean-air future. We also find distributional differences between different measures of national impacts, especially when comparing standard or monetized health endpoints with our alternative that focuses on healthy life years. Finally, Chapter 4 concludes wit h future considerations for scenario development, analytical choices, and stakeholder considerations for integrating the health impacts of air pollution into sustainability decisions.

Download or read book Air Pollution Calculations written by Daniel A. Vallero and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2019-05-03 with total page 571 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Air Pollution Calculations introduces the equations and formulae that are most important to air pollution, but goes a step further. Most texts lack examples of how these equations and formulae apply to the quantification of real-world scenarios and conditions. The ample example calculations apply to current air quality problems, including emission inventories, risk estimations, biogeochemical cycling assessments, and efficiencies in air pollution control technologies. In addition, the book explains thermodynamics and fluid dynamics in step-by-step and understandable calculations using air quality and multimedia modeling, reliability engineering and engineering economics using practical examples likely to be encountered by scientists, engineers, managers and decision makers. The book touches on the environmental variables, constraints and drivers that can influence pollutant mass, volume and concentrations, which in turn determine toxicity and adverse outcomes caused by air pollution. How the pollutants form, move, partition, transform and find their fate are explained using the entire range of atmospheric phenomena. The control, prevention and mitigation of air pollution are explained based on physical, chemical and biological principles which is crucial to science-based policy and decision-making. Users will find this to be a comprehensive, single resource that will help them understand air pollution, quantify existing data, and help those whose work is impacted by air pollution. Explains air pollution in a comprehensive manner, enabling readers to understand how to measure and assess risks to human populations and ecosystems actually or potentially exposed to air pollutants Covers air pollution from a multivariate, systems approach, bringing in atmospheric processes, health impacts, environmental impacts, controls and prevention Facilitates an understanding of broad factors, like climate and transport, that influence patterns and change in pollutant concentrations, both spatially and over time

Download or read book Quantification of Population Exposure and Health Impacts Associated with Air Pollution written by David Segersson and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Handbook of Air Quality and Climate Change written by Hajime Akimoto and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-10-29 with total page 1532 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook covers the air quality/air pollution from the viewpoints of causing impacts on human/ecosystem health and climate change. Traditionally, air pollution has been a concern mainly in terms of its impacts on human health, and it is still an immediate public and governmental concern in most Asian countries. However, in recent years so-called extreme weather events, such as stronger tropical cyclones, flooding, drought, and other phenomena, have been manifested causing tremendous losses of human lives and properties. Importantly, climate models tell us that such extreme weather events are actually induced by anthropogenic global warming. It has been pointed out that mitigation or alleviation of such climate change leading to the extreme weather events in the next 30 years can be possible only by reducing air pollutants with positive radiative forcing such as ozone or methane, which are called short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs). Here, concerns about mitigation of air pollutants from the points of human health and climate change have merged. This book covers different kinds of air pollutants and radiative forcers and how they can be measured. It also mentions the situation of air pollutants in different continents and their regional impacts to human health, environment and economy as well as their link to extreme weather events. The book presents how the air pollution and climate change can be mitigated and how clean air technologies and international initiatives for co-controlling air pollution and climate change have been developed.

Download or read book Air Pollution Climate Change and Human Health written by Hannah Charlotte Klauber and published by . This book was released on 2023 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Quantifying the Air Quality Impacts of Energy Efficiency Policies and Programs written by John Shenot and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Examining Energy sector Impacts on Ambient Air Pollution in the U S and India Using Models and Observations written by Alexandra Karambelas and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ambient air pollution is a persistent health problem contributing to 3.7 million premature deaths annually. This dissertation uses numerical modeling, ground-based measurements, and satellite observations to assess energy-sector emissions impacts on health- and regulatory-relevant ambient pollution in the U.S. and India. Quantifying changes in U.S. energy sector emissions offer support for new regulatory strategies for improving air quality, and model evaluation provides the foundation for further air quality modeling studies in India. High air pollution days exceeding U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) standards are persistent across the eastern U.S. Emissions from on-road and electricity generating sources (EGUs) release gases resulting in ambient O3 and PM2.5. Source-apportionment modeling techniques are used to assess energy-sector contributions on high pollution days. Sensitivity simulations using the EPA's Community Multi-scale Air Quality (CMAQ) model suggest on-road emissions contribute to higher O3 concentrations (10.69% average, 18.82% polluted), whereas PM2.5 is sensitive to emissions from EGUs (29.08% average, 55.36% polluted). Increased contributions from motor vehicles and EGUs are found to occur coincident with high temperatures and low wind speeds, meteorological factors that tend to increase pollution formation and accumulation. A separate component of this work focuses on air quality in India, and is one of the first applications of CMAQ in the region. Model results validated with satellite observations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) from the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) indicate low model biases in the tropospheric column ( -65.8%), and evaluation with surface observations indicate high biases, particularly in urban areas, for gas-phase species (NO2: 31.4%, sulfur dioxide: 26.7%, O3: 19.7%) and low model biases for PM2.5 ( -47.1%), despite the inclusion of a new windblown dust module. Finally, high-resolution emissions from the Greenhouse Gas and Air Pollution Interactions and Synergies (GAINS) model including updated urban and rural population and activity information for northern India indicate detailed spatial allocation information has a strong impact on modeled ambient air quality. Results highlight the importance in relating emissions spatial and temporal distribution to air quality. Similarities and differences pertaining to energy-sector emissions in the U.S. and India suggest the need to further assess health- and policy-relevant air quality concerns unique regionally.