Evaluating Air Quality and Climate Mitigation Pathways

Goal

With funding from ExxonMobil Technology and Engineering Company, our team is evaluating how policies to address air quality can be designed to achieve climate benefits and vice versa.


Objectives

  • We are developing a modeling framework that integrates energy and atmospheric models to different air quality regulation and climate mitigation scenarios for the 2025–2050 period. By integrating the EPA's Community Multiscale Air Quality (CMAQ) model and the Global Change Analysis Model for the United States (GCAM-USA) model, our team will:

    • Estimate emission reductions required to attain hypothetical national air quality standards

    • Evaluate how the energy system responds when required to meet air quality targets.

    • Evaluate how energy system pathways differ under different policy scenarios: 1) air quality constraints only, 2) climate-based constraints only, and 3) combined air quality and climate constraints.


Funding Partner:

ExxonMobil Technology and Engineering Company

Timeline:

2026-2028

Tools/Data:

CMAQ, GCAM-USA

Core Team Members:

Tracey Holloway, Huan Fang, Jackson Fairley, Vedaa Vandavasi