An extensive CO2 monitoring network set up around the San Francisco Bay Area by an atmospheric chemist from the University of California, Berkeley, has recorded the first evidence that the adoption of electric vehicles is measurably lowering the area's carbon emissions.
An extensive CO2 monitoring network set up around the San Francisco Bay Area by an atmospheric chemist from the University of California, Berkeley, has recorded the first evidence that the adoption of electric vehicles is measurably lowering the area's carbon emissions.
The network of sensors, most of them in the East Bay, is the brainchild of Ronald Cohen, UC Berkeley professor of chemistry, who envisions inexpensive, publicly funded pollution and carbon dioxide monitors widely distributed around urban areas to pinpoint emission sources and the neighborhoods most affected. An estimated 70% of global CO2 emissions come from cities, yet few urban areas have granular data about where those emissions originate.
In 2012, Cohen began setting up a Bay Area sensing network that has now grown to more than 80 stations, including seven in San Francisco, that stretches from Sonoma County through Vallejo and down to San Leandro.
Between 2018 and 2022, 57 of the sensors in the Berkeley Environmental Air Quality and CO2 Network (BEACO2N) recorded a small but steady decrease in CO2 emissions — about 1.8% annually — that translates to a 2.6% yearly drop in vehicle emission rates. Looking at California data for electric vehicle adoption — which is very high in the Bay Area — Cohen and graduate student Naomi Asimow concluded that the decrease was due to passenger vehicle electrification.
Read more at University of California - Berkeley
Photo Credit: stux via Pixabay
