Quantifying the impact of renewable energy technology and policy interventions on air pollution and climate

我的研究重点是解决我们目前面临的一些最大的社会挑战：在日益全球化的城市世界中改善空气质量和减缓气候变化。许多空气污染物的来源是气候强迫因子的共同排放者，如温室气体和黑碳，因此空气质量和气候科学是错综复杂的相关领域，可以使用精心设计的环境政策进行有效的共同管理。例如，鼓励重型卡车使用天然气的政策可以同时减少尾气和温室气体排放。然而，任何关于空气质量和气候结果的政策决定的有效性往往难以使用传统的基于实验室的研究来量化，因为实验室很难代表现实世界的行为。因此，我们必须开发基于现实世界的工具，以快速、定量地评估我们的政策决策对空气和气候结果的影响，并利用所获得的知识来支持更好的政策规划。作为我长期研究愿景的一部分，我计划开发和应用工具，以获得可靠和定量的数据，以支持更好的空气和气候政策。与HQP一起，我提出了两项研究，使用现实世界的监测工具来量化政策干预和技术对空气和气候相关污染物减排的影响。这些研究将在两个不同的环境中进行，温哥华，不列颠哥伦比亚省和一个农村村庄在北方邦，印度，以证明该方法的广泛适用性。这些研究将涉及运输部门的排放和家庭燃烧造成的室内空气污染，这是空气污染物和气候强迫因子的两个主要来源。两者都将使用相同的低成本空气质量传感器，这是一种新兴的空气质量监测技术，包括商用和研究传感器的混合。使用低成本的空气质量传感器进行监测，可以以与现有制度相当的成本实现更密集的网络。此外，这些传感器结构紧凑，耗电量低，因此可以相对轻松地移动到资源和基础设施有限的农村地区或发展中地区。研究期间收集的数据将外推到城市和区域尺度系统，以预测对空气和气候结果的影响。我们还将调整技术以确定最佳配置，并将为加拿大和全球政策制定者总结这些建议，以支持制定更有影响力和更有效的政策来保护我们的空气和气候。 此外，在我的项目中开发和应用的传感器技术和数据分析工具将提供近实时的评估，使社区能够更快地评估或改进政策，提高我们环境政策的整体有效性。

My research is focused on tackling some of the greatest societal challenges we currently face: improving air quality and mitigating climate change in an increasingly globalized, urban world. Many sources of air pollutants are co-emitters of climate-forcing agents, such as greenhouse gases and black carbon, and thus air quality and climate science are intricately related fields, which may be effectively co-managed using well-crafted environmental policy. For example, policies to incentivize fueling heavy-duty trucks with natural gas may simultaneously reduce tailpipe and greenhouse gas emissions. However, the effectiveness of any given policy decision on air quality and climate outcomes is often difficult to quantify using traditional laboratory-based research as the laboratory poorly represents real-world behaviour. Thus, it is critical that we develop real-world based tools to quickly and quantitatively assess the impact of our policy decisions on air and climate outcomes, and use the knowledge gained to support better policy planning. As part of my long-term research vision, I plan on developing and applying instruments to obtain reliable and quantitative data in support of better air and climate policy. Together with HQP, I propose two studies using real-world monitoring tools to quantify the impact of policy interventions and technology on air and climate-relevant pollutant reductions. The studies will be conducted in two diverse environments, Vancouver, British Columbia and a rural village in Uttar Pradesh, India to demonstrate the broad applicability of the methods. The studies will address emissions from the transportation sector and indoor air pollution from household combustion, two major sources of air pollutants and climate forcing agents. Both will use the same low-cost air quality sensors, an emerging air quality monitoring technology that comprise a mix of commercially available and research sensors. The use of low-cost air quality sensors for monitoring enables denser networks at a comparable cost to the existing regime. Furthermore, these sensors are compact and have a low power demand, allowing them to be moved with relative ease to rural areas or developing regions where limited resources and infrastructure exist.The data collected during the studies will be extrapolated to city and regional scale systems to forecast the impact on air and climate outcomes. Technologies will also be tuned to identify optimal configurations and these recommendations will be summarized for Canadian and global policymakers to support writing more impactful and efficient policy to protect our air and climate. Furthermore, the sensor technology and data analysis tools developed and applied in my program will provide assessments in near real-time, enabling the community to iterate or improve policies more quickly, improving the overall effectiveness of our environmental policies.