Electric vehicle attributed future air pollution alleviation: A case study in Guangdong province, China

Electric vehicles (EVs) are advocated to combat the effects of tailpipe emissions. This study synergizes EV charging consumption and charging stations from six cities in Guangdong (GD) province, China, to reveal the potential impacts of EVs on four relevant air pollutants (PM_2.5, NO₂, SO₂, CO) based on a data-driven attention-based Random Forest model and scenario analysis. Measurements from traffic-affected air pollution monitoring stations show that NO₂ concentrations have a higher mean decrease trend (-2.39 year^-1) in the PRD region after EV adoption, followed by PM_2.5 (-0.29 year^-1). In contrast, the environmental benefits of EVs for SO₂ and CO are relatively lower, with decreasing trends of -0.12 year^-1 and -0.013 year^-1, respectively. Pronounced alleviations of these four air pollutants were presented for most districts in other cities under the assumption of conducting comparative EV policy, with mean reductions of -1.86 μg/m³, -1.08 μg/m³, -0.17 μg/m³ and -0.01 mg/m³ (by 7.8 %, 4.9 %, 1.9 % and 1.4 % with the reference of average values in 2023) for PM_2.5, NO₂, SO₂ and CO, respectively. Moreover, the concentrations tend to decline as the increase in EV charging consumption and the number of EV charging stations. Results show that a 30 % increase in both EV charging consumption and stations results in a further decline in PM_2.5 (-0.46 μg/m³), NO₂ (-0.37 μg/m³), SO₂ (-0.048 μg/m³), and CO (-0.0043 mg/m³) in Guang Dong (GD) province. To the best of our knowledge, it is the first time to assess environmental benefits of EVs with the involvement of actual EV charging demand and charging stations.