NNA Research: Collaborative Research: Displacing Wood Use with Electric Thermal Storage Heating to Improve Ambient Air Quality

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Navigating the New Arctic (NNA) is one of NSF's 10 Big Ideas. NNA projects address convergence scientific challenges in the rapidly changing Arctic. The Arctic research is needed to inform the economy, security and resilience of the Nation, the larger region and the globe. NNA empowers new research partnerships from local to international scales, diversifies the next generation of Arctic researchers, enhances efforts in formal and informal education, and integrates the co-production of knowledge where appropriate. This award fulfills part of that aim by addressing interactions among social systems, natural environment, and built environment in the following NNA focus areas: Arctic Residents, Data and Observation, Education, and Resilient Infrastructure.In Arctic regions, space heating is often a necessity, but burning fuel to heat living spaces has substantial financial and environmental costs. In the Fairbanks North Star Borough (FNSB), Alaska, for example, most households use heating fuel oil as their primary source of space heating and firewood as a secondary heating source. Wood-burning heating devices are the largest source of fine particulate matter with a size of 2.5 microns or less, (PM2.5), in the borough, but wood is a relatively low-cost fuel compared to heating fuel oil. The FNSB is classified as a nonattainment area for PM2.5, which is associated with negative impacts on cardiopulmonary health. Electric thermal storage heaters (ETSH) could help solve the PM2.5 problem by replacing the firewood currently used for residential space heating. This research aims to determine whether the use of residential ETSH can mitigate ambient PM2.5 air pollution and fuel poverty in Interior Alaska. This research has public health and policy implications for any community interested in reducing PM2.5 air pollution resulting from wood burning for residential space heating. It also has implications for Arctic communities interested in the relationship between wood burning and the carbon components of PM2.5. This research may lead to a broader adoption of ETSH for space heating, which could improve air quality, reduce fuel poverty, and reduce the carbon footprint of residential space heating. The project incorporates dimensions of the natural environment, built environment, and social systems through four components: 1) an ETSH field experiment; 2) air quality analysis and modeling; 3) economic analysis; and 4) air quality education. The research objectives of the project will: 1) measure the ambient PM2.5 air pollution in a treatment and control neighborhood before and after the installation of residential ETSH in the treatment neighborhood; 2) conduct emission inventories of the sources of PM2.5 in the control and treatment neighborhoods; 3) model the collected PM2.5 air pollution data, controlling for wind speed and direction, air temperature, and relative humidity, to determine if there is a measurable difference in ambient PM2.5 concentrations between the treatment and control neighborhoods; 4) measure the constituents and estimate the source contributions of PM2.5; 5) forecast how changes in fuel prices and increases in the number and concentration of ETSH may affect ambient PM2.5 air pollution in the FNSB; 6) estimate FNSB residents’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for electricity to charge ETSH; 7) estimate short-run own-price, cross-price, and expenditure elasticities of demand for residential heating fuels in the FNSB; 8) estimate the impact of ETSH on residential heating expenditures under different electricity rates; and 9) collaborate with FNSB teachers to develop and pilot curriculum materials for a science unit on PM2.5 air pollution.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.