Air Quality and Health Impact of Future Fossil Fuel Use for Electricity Generation and Transport in Africa

Africa has ambitious plans to address energy deficits and sustain economic growth with fossil fueled power plants. The continent is also experiencing faster population growth than anywhere else in the world that will lead to proliferation of vehicles. Here, we estimate air pollutant emissions in Afr...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Environmental science & technology 2019-11, Vol.53 (22), p.13524-13534
Main Authors: Marais, Eloise A, Silvern, Rachel F, Vodonos, Alina, Dupin, Eleonore, Bockarie, Alfred S, Mickley, Loretta J, Schwartz, Joel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Air pollution
Air quality
Airborne particulates
Computer simulation
Confidence intervals
Economic development
Economic growth
Electric power generation
Electricity
Electricity generation
Emissions
Fatalities
Fossil fueled power plants
Fossil fuels
Industrial plant emissions
Mitigation
Nitrogen oxides
Outdoor air quality
Oxides
Particulate matter
Photochemicals
Pollutants
Pollution dispersion
Population growth
Power plants
Sulfur
Sulfur dioxide
Transport
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Africa has ambitious plans to address energy deficits and sustain economic growth with fossil fueled power plants. The continent is also experiencing faster population growth than anywhere else in the world that will lead to proliferation of vehicles. Here, we estimate air pollutant emissions in Africa from future (2030) electricity generation and transport. We find that annual emissions of two precursors of fine particles (PM2.5) hazardous to health, sulfur dioxide (SO2) and nitrogen oxides (NO x ), approximately double by 2030 relative to 2012, increasing from 2.5 to 5.5 Tg SO2 and 1.5 to 2.8 Tg NO x . We embed these emissions in the GEOS-Chem model nested over the African continent to simulate ambient concentrations of PM2.5 and determine the burden of disease (excess deaths) attributable to exposure to future fossil fuel use. We calculate 48000 avoidable deaths in 2030 (95% confidence interval: 6000–88000), mostly in South Africa (10400), Nigeria (7500), and Malawi (2400), with 3-times higher mortality rates from power plants than transport. Sensitivity of the burden of disease to either population growth or air quality varies regionally and suggests that emission mitigation strategies would be most effective in Southern Africa, whereas population growth is the main driver everywhere else.
ISSN:0013-936X
1520-5851
DOI:10.1021/acs.est.9b04958