Energy Policy Impacts on Air Quality and Climate at the National, Regional and Global Scale
The ability of future society to adapt to and mitigate climate change in a just way requires an understanding of the local impacts of policy, as well as the uncertainties in the human and earth systems. This thesis brings together air quality and climate change, quantifying the impacts of relevant p...
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| Format: | Thesis |
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Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2023
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| Online Access: | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152960 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0944-2182 |
| _version_ | 1826215325446701056 |
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| author | Freese, Lyssa M. |
| author2 | Selin, Noelle E. |
| author_facet | Selin, Noelle E. Freese, Lyssa M. |
| author_sort | Freese, Lyssa M. |
| collection | MIT |
| description | The ability of future society to adapt to and mitigate climate change in a just way requires an understanding of the local impacts of policy, as well as the uncertainties in the human and earth systems. This thesis brings together air quality and climate change, quantifying the impacts of relevant policies, developing idealized metrics for quantifying climate phenomena, and improving our capacity to model future emissions scenarios.
The first chapter explores the impacts that shutting down nuclear power would have on the distribution of air quality in the United States, as well as longer-term climate impacts. This is done using an energy grid model (US-EGO) paired with a chemical transport model (CTM), GEOS-Chem, which allows for calculation of the complex chemical responses to changes in emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOₓ) and sulfur dioxide (SO₂), and subsequent health impacts. This work shows that shutting down nuclear power without adequate clean energy ramp-up leads to increased pollution, climate impacts, and subsequent premature mortalities. Even with the 2030 expected renewable capacity in the United States, there is still a net increase in premature mortalities due to air pollution. This poses an issue for a just energy transition, as Black and African American communities in the United States are already disproportionately exposed to pollution from fossil fuel energy sources, so anything that leads to additional emissions from these sources will disproportionately harm these communities.
In chapter two, I build a new approach to modeling the impacts of tropospheric chemical species, with the aim of allowing us to examine large ensembles of social scenarios without the high computational costs of CTMs. Using Green's functions (a form of impulse response function) to represent the transport of Black Carbon (BC) in Southeast Asia (SEA), I define a wide range of policy trajectories to evaluate the implications of early coal retirements in the region. This approach improves our ability to evaluate multiple criteria, such as climate, air quality, energy capacity, and economic impacts.
For the third chapter, I establish a simplified approach for quantifying the temperature impact of CO₂ on temperature in the Antarctic. This work shows that in spite of a negative greenhouse effect at the top of the atmosphere, the Antarctic still warms in response to increased greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations. This is done through the creation of a single column model, and I propose the use of the surface greenhouse effect rather than that of the top of the atmosphere to estimate the Antarctic temperature response to CO₂.
The fourth chapter uses the approach of the second chapter and concepts of the third chapter to develop an emulator of the spatial temperature response to emissions of CO₂. Current approaches to modeling the temperature response to an emissions scenario are either computationally expensive or low resolution (often just providing the global mean value). In order to better quantify the local impact of varying climate policies, we develop a Green's Function emulator for temperature response to CO₂ based on CMIP6 model data, thus maintaining the high resolution and underlying complexity of the model, but reducing run time by a factor of 10,000,000. This approach can be used to investigate various policies and the time dependency of local temperature change on an emissions trajectory. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:24:01Z |
| format | Thesis |
| id | mit-1721.1/152960 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T16:24:01Z |
| publishDate | 2023 |
| publisher | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/1529602023-11-14T03:02:47Z Energy Policy Impacts on Air Quality and Climate at the National, Regional and Global Scale Freese, Lyssa M. Selin, Noelle E. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences The ability of future society to adapt to and mitigate climate change in a just way requires an understanding of the local impacts of policy, as well as the uncertainties in the human and earth systems. This thesis brings together air quality and climate change, quantifying the impacts of relevant policies, developing idealized metrics for quantifying climate phenomena, and improving our capacity to model future emissions scenarios. The first chapter explores the impacts that shutting down nuclear power would have on the distribution of air quality in the United States, as well as longer-term climate impacts. This is done using an energy grid model (US-EGO) paired with a chemical transport model (CTM), GEOS-Chem, which allows for calculation of the complex chemical responses to changes in emissions of nitrogen oxides (NOₓ) and sulfur dioxide (SO₂), and subsequent health impacts. This work shows that shutting down nuclear power without adequate clean energy ramp-up leads to increased pollution, climate impacts, and subsequent premature mortalities. Even with the 2030 expected renewable capacity in the United States, there is still a net increase in premature mortalities due to air pollution. This poses an issue for a just energy transition, as Black and African American communities in the United States are already disproportionately exposed to pollution from fossil fuel energy sources, so anything that leads to additional emissions from these sources will disproportionately harm these communities. In chapter two, I build a new approach to modeling the impacts of tropospheric chemical species, with the aim of allowing us to examine large ensembles of social scenarios without the high computational costs of CTMs. Using Green's functions (a form of impulse response function) to represent the transport of Black Carbon (BC) in Southeast Asia (SEA), I define a wide range of policy trajectories to evaluate the implications of early coal retirements in the region. This approach improves our ability to evaluate multiple criteria, such as climate, air quality, energy capacity, and economic impacts. For the third chapter, I establish a simplified approach for quantifying the temperature impact of CO₂ on temperature in the Antarctic. This work shows that in spite of a negative greenhouse effect at the top of the atmosphere, the Antarctic still warms in response to increased greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations. This is done through the creation of a single column model, and I propose the use of the surface greenhouse effect rather than that of the top of the atmosphere to estimate the Antarctic temperature response to CO₂. The fourth chapter uses the approach of the second chapter and concepts of the third chapter to develop an emulator of the spatial temperature response to emissions of CO₂. Current approaches to modeling the temperature response to an emissions scenario are either computationally expensive or low resolution (often just providing the global mean value). In order to better quantify the local impact of varying climate policies, we develop a Green's Function emulator for temperature response to CO₂ based on CMIP6 model data, thus maintaining the high resolution and underlying complexity of the model, but reducing run time by a factor of 10,000,000. This approach can be used to investigate various policies and the time dependency of local temperature change on an emissions trajectory. Ph.D. 2023-11-13T19:57:24Z 2023-11-13T19:57:24Z 2023-09 2023-07-05T18:25:06.734Z Thesis https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152960 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0944-2182 Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) Copyright retained by author(s) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ application/pdf Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| spellingShingle | Freese, Lyssa M. Energy Policy Impacts on Air Quality and Climate at the National, Regional and Global Scale |
| title | Energy Policy Impacts on Air Quality and Climate at the National, Regional and Global Scale |
| title_full | Energy Policy Impacts on Air Quality and Climate at the National, Regional and Global Scale |
| title_fullStr | Energy Policy Impacts on Air Quality and Climate at the National, Regional and Global Scale |
| title_full_unstemmed | Energy Policy Impacts on Air Quality and Climate at the National, Regional and Global Scale |
| title_short | Energy Policy Impacts on Air Quality and Climate at the National, Regional and Global Scale |
| title_sort | energy policy impacts on air quality and climate at the national regional and global scale |
| url | https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/152960 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0944-2182 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT freeselyssam energypolicyimpactsonairqualityandclimateatthenationalregionalandglobalscale |