Spatiotemporally Detailed Quantification of Air Quality Benefits of Emissions Reductions-Part I: Benefit-per-Ton Estimates for Canada and the U.S

Shunliu Zhao; Petros Vasilakos; Anas Alhusban; Yasar Burak Oztaner; Alan Krupnick; Howard Chang; Armistead Russell; Amir Hakami

doi:10.1021/acsestair.4c00127

Spatiotemporally Detailed Quantification of Air Quality Benefits of Emissions Reductions-Part I: Benefit-per-Ton Estimates for Canada and the U.S

ACS EST Air. 2024 Sep 3;1(10):1215-1226. doi: 10.1021/acsestair.4c00127. eCollection 2024 Oct 11.

Authors

Shunliu Zhao¹, Petros Vasilakos², Anas Alhusban¹, Yasar Burak Oztaner¹, Alan Krupnick³, Howard Chang⁴, Armistead Russell², Amir Hakami¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario K1S 5B6, Canada.
² School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30331, United States.
³ Resources For the Future, Washington, D.C. 20036, United States.
⁴ Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 30322, United States.

Abstract

The U.S. EPA's Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ)-adjoint model is used to map monetized health benefits (defined here as benefits of reduced mortality from chronic PM_2.5 exposure) in the form of benefits per ton (of emissions reduced) for the U.S. and Canada for NOx, SO₂, ammonia, and primary PM_2.5 emissions. The adjoint model provides benefits per ton (BPTs) that are location-specific and applicable to various sectors. BPTs show significant variability across locations, such that only 20% of primary PM_2.5 emissions in each country makes up more than half of its burden. The greatest benefits in terms of BPTs are for primary PM_2.5 reductions, followed by ammonia. Seasonal differences in benefits vary by pollutant: while PM_2.5 benefits remain high across seasons, BPTs for reducing ammonia are much higher in the winter due to the increased ammonium nitrate formation efficiency. Based on our location-specific BPTs, we estimate a total of 91,000 U.S. premature mortalities attributable to natural and anthropogenic emissions.