Mitigation of air pollution and corresponding impacts during a global energy transition towards 100% renewable energy system by 2050

Abstract

Air pollution from the combustion of fossil fuels has adverse health impacts and is linked to cardiovascular disease, strokes, acute respiratory disease and cancer, predominantly in urban centres around the world. Increasing use of renewables for power generation has been seen to bring about the benefits of cleaner air in regions and countries that have high shares of renewable energy installations. This research aims to estimate current NOx, SOx, PM2.5, and PM10 emissions from the energy sector and identify the trends in development of these emissions during a global energy transition towards 100% renewable energy. In this energy transition, total emissions from the global energy sector are projected to drop by almost 92% in 2050 compared to 2015, with annual premature deaths from energy sector-related air pollution reducing by about 97% from 5.2 million deaths in 2015 to 150 thousand deaths by 2050. Annual damage costs are forecast to drop drastically by 88.5% from about 4600 b€ in 2015 to 529 b€ by 2050. This research shows that defossilisation and a shift to renewable forms of energy enables a massive reduction in air pollutant emissions that are directly harmful to human health, resulting in immense health and economic benefits in terms of avoided fatalities and saved health expenditures across the world.