Abstract:

In recent years, electric vehicles (EVs) have been marketed as an efficient way to reduce air pollution caused by tailpipe emissions. The contaminants extracted from EVs are, however, overlooked. In order to provide energy, EVs depend on electricity and thus their associated emission is transferred to the power plants, giving rise to environmental and health pressure in the adjacent regions. In this paper, the transfer of EV-attributed PM2.5, SO2, and NOx inhalations in China are studied. Then by comparing the inhalations versus traffic accessibility among the impacted municipalities, this study sheds light on the environmental injustice lying in the mismatch between pollutant inhalations and traffic accessibility. The results reveal that compared with Shanghai and Shenzhen, the promotion of EVs in Beijing triggers higher pollutant inhalations to its surrounding municipalities. North China Power Grid undertakes 715.62 g PM2.5 inhalation in total, which is 2.51 and 3.20 times greater than the East China Power Grid and the China Southern Power Grid, respectively. The number of municipalities with lower traffic accessibility while higher pollutant inhalation is 8,8, and 17 in North China Power Grid, East China Power Grid, and China Southern Power Grid respectively, indicating conspicuous environmental injustice resulted from the promotion of EVs. This study provides a theoretical basis for EV promotion and the elimination of EV-attributed environmental injustice in the three power grids, as it is contributive to formulating explicit policy guidance to promote EVs and optimize the pollutant inhalation allocation.