The payoff from electric vehicles is already showing up in the air.
A new study in The Lancet Planetary Health found that higher electric vehicle use in California was linked to lower nitrogen dioxide pollution, based on satellite measurements taken across nearly 1,700 ZIP codes from 2019 to 2023.
California has the highest rates of EV use in the country, and the national team of scientists found that for every increase of 200 electric vehicles, nitrogen dioxide emissions fell by 1.1 percent.
Sandrah Eckel, a public health professor at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine and lead author of the study, called the results “remarkable.”
“We’re not even fully there in terms of electrifying, but our research shows that California’s transition to electric vehicles is already making measurable differences in the air we breathe,” Eckel said in a university press release.
“These findings show that cleaner air isn’t just a theory, it’s already happening in communities across California,” she added.
Eckel and her co-authors said their “revolutionary approach” to studying emissions could be replicated elsewhere.
“Satellite-measured NO2 could be used across the globe to assess changes in NO2 from ongoing climate mitigation efforts to reduce fossil-fuel combustion, with these data informing policy decisions to protect public health today and in the future,” the authors wrote.
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