Do China's EVs really reduce emissions and improve air quality? - with Zhang Shaojun

Today's episode looks at the topic of electric vehicles and their impact on both carbon emissions and urban air quality. China has the world’s largest market for electric vehicles, and it is the largest maker of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles manufactured worldwide. Hence, the environmental impact of EVs, even outside of China, often goes back upstream to China.

Our guest is Zhang Shaojun, Associate Professor at the Tsinghua University School of the Environment. His research examines the environmental impacts of emissions from road transportation systems on air quality, climate and public health. Before joining Tsinghua University, he was a Postdoctoral Associate at University of Michigan and Atkinson Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Cornell University. 

Shaojun and his colleagues have published two important papers on these topics this year. The first, in the journal PNAS Nexus, looks at the upstream greenhouse gas emissions from battery manufacturing as well as a regional breakdown of power sector emissions from EV charging. The second paper, in Environmental Pollution, looks at the impact of EVs on air quality, employing Tsinghua's CMAQ model to look at how EVs affect ozone and PM2.5, in particular considering the seasonal effects on air chemistry, which relates to the formation of secondary pollution. (Primary emissions refer to pollutants directly emitted from vehicles or power plants, whereas secondary pollutants are formed in the atmosphere through mixing of chemical precursors.)

For further reading:

Fang Wang, Shaojun Zhang, Yinan Zhao, Yunxiao Ma, Yichen Zhang, Anders Hove, and Ye Wu, “Multisectoral drivers of decarbonizing battery electric vehicles in China,” PNAS Nexus, Volume 2, Issue 5, May 2023, https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/2/5/pgad123/7159885.

Yiliang Jiang, Xinyu Liang, Shaojun Zhang, Zechun Hu, Anders Hove, and Ye Wu, “The future air quality impact of electric vehicle promotion and coordinated charging in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region,” Environ Pollut., 1 September 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2023.121928.

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Episode Executive Producer: Anders Hove