US decarbonization impacts on air quality and environmental justice

As policy organizations consider strategies to mitigate climate change, decarbonization initiatives can also reduce health-impacting air pollutants and may affect the associated racial disparities of adverse effects. With the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency CO-Benefits Risk Assessment Health Impacts Screening Tool (COBRA), we compare three decarbonization scenarios and their impacts at the regional and county scales. COBRA calculates changes in county-level ambient fine particulate matter (PM2.5), and associated mortality impacts, for each decarbonization scenario. We compare these patterns with demographic data to evaluate the relative exposure reduction benefit across race and ethnicity. Carbon-free electricity would reduce national average ambient PM2.5 concentrations by 0.21 mu g m(-3), compared with a 0.19 mu g m(-3) reduction associated with carbon-free industrial activity, and a 0.08 mu g m(-3) reduction associated with carbon-free light duty vehicle (LDV) transportation. Decarbonization strategies also vary in terms of the racial groups most benefitting from each scenario, due to regional and urban/rural patterns in emission sources and population demographics. Black populations are the only group to experience relative exposure reduction benefits compared to the total population in every scenario, with industrial decarbonization yielding 23% greater reductions in ambient PM2.5 concentrations for Black populations than for the total U.S. population. The largest relative reduction in PM2.5 exposure was found for Asian populations in the carbon-free LDV transportation scenario (53%). The magnitudes of total air quality improvements by scenario vary across regions of the U.S., and generally do not align with the decarbonization policy that achieves the largest equity goal. Only the transportation decarbonization scenario meets the criteria of the Justice40 Initiative nationwide, fulfilling the 2021 commitment by U.S. President Biden that federal investments in clean energy are designed to allocate at least 40% of benefits to disadvantaged communities.

Automated summary

By comparing three decarbonization scenarios using the CO-Benefits Risk Assessment Health Impacts Screening Tool (COBRA), this study explores the impact of decarbonization on air pollution and racial disparities. The results show that carbon-free electricity has the greatest effect on reducing PM2.5 concentrations, while carbon-free industrial activity has a significant impact on the Black population, and carbon-free light duty vehicle (LDV) transportation has the largest effect on Asian populations. The study also highlights the variation in air quality improvement across different regions and the importance of considering equity when designing decarbonization policies.