ASSESSING THE IMPACTS OF ELECTRIC VEHICLES ON REGIONAL AIR QUALITY,
PUBLIC HEALTH AND SOCIAL WELFARE IN CHINA
Ou Xunmin, Tsinghua Univ, Phone +86 13910731708, E-mail: [email protected]
Zhang Xu, Tsinghua Univ, Phone +86 13811268799, E-mail: [email protected]
Yang Xi, Tsinghua Univ, Phone +86 18910602467, E-mail: [email protected]
Zhang Xiliang, Tsinghua Univ, Phone +86 13911261226, E-mail: [email protected]
Overview
As an efficient measure to control oil consumption from transport sector, reduce carbon emissions and pollutant
emissions, the development and expansion of electric vehicles (EVs) has been driving more and more concerns in
China. This study conducts the integrated assessment of developing EVs in major regions and analyzes the
comprehensive impacts on energy consumption, pollutant emissions, air quality, public health and social welfare
using the China Regional Energy Emissions Air-quality Climate Health Model model. The emissions abatement
effects of EV development goals on transport sector in 2030 in Jing-Jin-Ji (Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei), YRD (Yangtze
River Delta, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang) and PRD (Pearl River Delta, Guangdong) are well identified. Then we
investigate the impacts of expanding EVs on improving regional air quality, public health and social welfare effects
in the selected regions.
The paper is organised as follows: After the introduction the second section gives a detailed description about the
REACH comprehensive evaluation model and CREM-HE model which is extended from the standard version of
CREM model using for health effects analysing. The third section addresses the data and assumptions, especially the
provincial vehicle population and EVs development goal data. Results and discussion are provided in the section
four and conclusions are given in the last section.
Methods
As Figure 1 shows, REACH Model is an advanced self-consistent integrated assessment model with the ability to
capture the comprehensive impact of energy, environment and climate policy and to reflect the policy cost and
benefit. REACH Model incorporates the energy and economy model, emission inventory model, atmospheric
chemistry transport model and health effects evaluation model to implement the interdisciplinary and multi-system
integration. REACH Model can be applied for policy cost-benefit analysis in the self-consistent framework by
representing the provincial details of energy and economy systems and the spatial distribution information including
emissions inventory and population to improve the spatial resolution.
Figure 1. The theoretical framework of REACH model.
The REACH model integrates the China Regional Energy-economic model (C-REM) used for energy and climate
policy analysis with air quality impacts modeling system and the China-specific health effect module. As the
cornerstone of the REACH, the C-REM is a multi-regional, multi-sector, computable general equilibrium (CGE)
model used to analyze the impacts of existing and proposed energy and climate polices on technology, the
environment and the economy. The C-REM describes thirty Chinese provinces individually with a consistent
representation of energy markets, as well as detailed accounts of regional production and bilateral trade.
The greatest merit of the REACH model is that it explicitly represents the pollution-health linkage within a larger
economic system, and reduces the possibility of underestimation—the main limitation of conventional static
approaches by developing the CREM-Health Effect Module (CREM-HE).
For the purpose of reflecting the direct and indirect effects of air pollution on the health of the residents, we
improved the traditional social accounting matrix(SAM) by adding in a production sector and a leisure time
consumption sector in CREM-HE for responding to air pollution health services. On the basis of the above, we
described the exposure-response functions of four chronic exposure deaths and five acute exposures to health
outcomes using the latest epidemiological study of the health effects of air pollution, establishing correspondencse
from the concentration to the incidence or death cases.
Results
Compared with no EV situation in 2030, the total emissions of NOX, PM2.5, BC and OC decrease by 7.9%(8.5%,
8.0%), 7.5%(8.3%, 8.2%), 7.1%(7.8%, 7.7%) and 13.2%(14.3%, 14.3%) in JJJ (YRD, PRD) with the EVs
development goals are achieved. The average population weighted concentration of PM2.5 of JJJ, YRD and PRD
reduces up to 5.3ug /m3, 4.8ug /m3 and 2.0ug /m3, respectively, with the EVs development in 2030.
The accelerating popularization of EVs yields substantial public health benefits for selected regions, resulting in the
reduction of excess mortality cases: the cumulative avoided mortality cases in JJJ, YRD and PRD reaches up to 50,
60 and 20 thousand from 2015 to 2030. Notably, provinces either facing severe air pollution or enhancing
popularization of EV can enjoy more public health benefits.
Conclusions
The development and expansion of electric vehicles will be an efficient measure to reduce carbon emissions and
pollutant emissions in transport sector in studied China’s major regions. The accelerating popularization of EV
yields substantial public health benefits for selected regions, resulting in the reduction of excess mortality and
morbidity cases. To some extent, the co-benefits of developing EVs can offset the policy costs, offering a new
perspective to broaden the EVs consumer market.
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