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Air quality related equity implications of U.S. decarbonization policy

Climate policies that target greenhouse gas emissions can improve air quality by reducing co-emitted air pollutant emissions. However, the extent to which climate policy could contribute to the targets of reducing existing pollution disparities across different populations remains largely unknown. W...

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Autores principales: Picciano, Paul, Qiu, Minghao, Eastham, Sebastian D., Yuan, Mei, Reilly, John, Selin, Noelle E.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10509219/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37726275
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41131-x
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author Picciano, Paul
Qiu, Minghao
Eastham, Sebastian D.
Yuan, Mei
Reilly, John
Selin, Noelle E.
author_facet Picciano, Paul
Qiu, Minghao
Eastham, Sebastian D.
Yuan, Mei
Reilly, John
Selin, Noelle E.
author_sort Picciano, Paul
collection PubMed
description Climate policies that target greenhouse gas emissions can improve air quality by reducing co-emitted air pollutant emissions. However, the extent to which climate policy could contribute to the targets of reducing existing pollution disparities across different populations remains largely unknown. We quantify potential air pollution exposure reductions under U.S. federal carbon policy, considering implications of resulting health benefits for exposure disparities across U.S. racial/ethnic groups. We focus on policy cases that achieve reductions of 40-60% in 2030 economy-wide carbon dioxide (CO(2)) emissions, when compared with 2005 emissions. The 50% CO(2) reduction policy case reduces average fine particulate matter (PM(2.5)) exposure across racial/ethnic groups, with greatest benefit for non-Hispanic Black (−0.44 μg/m(3)) and white populations (−0.37 μg/m(3)). The average exposure disparity for racial/ethnic minorities rises from 12.4% to 13.1%. Applying an optimization approach to multiple emissions reduction scenarios, we find that no alternate combination of reductions from different CO(2) sources would substantially mitigate exposure disparities. Results suggest that CO(2)-based strategies for this range of reductions are insufficient for fully mitigating PM(2.5) exposure disparities between white and racial/ethnic minority populations; addressing disparities may require larger-scale structural changes.
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spelling pubmed-105092192023-09-21 Air quality related equity implications of U.S. decarbonization policy Picciano, Paul Qiu, Minghao Eastham, Sebastian D. Yuan, Mei Reilly, John Selin, Noelle E. Nat Commun Article Climate policies that target greenhouse gas emissions can improve air quality by reducing co-emitted air pollutant emissions. However, the extent to which climate policy could contribute to the targets of reducing existing pollution disparities across different populations remains largely unknown. We quantify potential air pollution exposure reductions under U.S. federal carbon policy, considering implications of resulting health benefits for exposure disparities across U.S. racial/ethnic groups. We focus on policy cases that achieve reductions of 40-60% in 2030 economy-wide carbon dioxide (CO(2)) emissions, when compared with 2005 emissions. The 50% CO(2) reduction policy case reduces average fine particulate matter (PM(2.5)) exposure across racial/ethnic groups, with greatest benefit for non-Hispanic Black (−0.44 μg/m(3)) and white populations (−0.37 μg/m(3)). The average exposure disparity for racial/ethnic minorities rises from 12.4% to 13.1%. Applying an optimization approach to multiple emissions reduction scenarios, we find that no alternate combination of reductions from different CO(2) sources would substantially mitigate exposure disparities. Results suggest that CO(2)-based strategies for this range of reductions are insufficient for fully mitigating PM(2.5) exposure disparities between white and racial/ethnic minority populations; addressing disparities may require larger-scale structural changes. Nature Publishing Group UK 2023-09-19 /pmc/articles/PMC10509219/ /pubmed/37726275 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41131-x Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) .
spellingShingle Article
Picciano, Paul
Qiu, Minghao
Eastham, Sebastian D.
Yuan, Mei
Reilly, John
Selin, Noelle E.
Air quality related equity implications of U.S. decarbonization policy
title Air quality related equity implications of U.S. decarbonization policy
title_full Air quality related equity implications of U.S. decarbonization policy
title_fullStr Air quality related equity implications of U.S. decarbonization policy
title_full_unstemmed Air quality related equity implications of U.S. decarbonization policy
title_short Air quality related equity implications of U.S. decarbonization policy
title_sort air quality related equity implications of u.s. decarbonization policy
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10509219/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37726275
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-023-41131-x
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