Equity Metrics for Transportation Electrification

Transportation accounts for a third of the world's carbon pollution from end-use sectors. In the United States, most transportation pollution comes from light-duty vehicles (such as passenger cars). Electrifying the transportation sector is therefore critical to confronting the climate crisis. During this transition, there are many equity considerations that need to be taken into account –  health benefits, EV adoption and access, employment opportunities, and other impacts can be unequally distributed across communities. 

Explore this page to see equity metrics based on the three dimensions of health, access, and livelihood. This framework can be used as a starting point to evaluate the equity and justice impacts of transportation electrification initiatives.

Health Dimension

Indicator

Proximity to hazard

Pollutant Exposure

Health outcome

Health monetization

Metric

Proximity to major roadways

Pollutant emissions

Community pollutant concentration and exposure

Avoided premature mortality

Monetized health benefits or costs

Measurement

Total population living near roadways (#), proportion of population living near roadways by race/ethnicity (%)

Pollutant emissions per vehicle (lbs vehicle -1)

Relative urinary cobalt concentration, relative blood cobalt concentration

Cumulative avoided premature mortalities (#), annual avoided premature mortalities (# year -1)

Cumulative health benefits ($), health benefits per mile ($ mile -1)

  • An estimated 3.7% of the US population (11.3 million people) live within 150 m of a major highway; this includes 3.1% of the White population, 5.0% of the Hispanic population, and 4.4% of the Black population (Boehmer et al 2013)

  • In the PJM interconnection region, vehicle electrification combined with high dependency on existing coal power plants could result in up to 1.2 lbs vehicle−1 of additional annual PM2.5 emissions (Weis et al 2015)

  • Subjects living within 3 km of a mining area in the Democratic Republic of Congo had urinary cobalt concentrations 43 times higher than the US general population, and a follow up study found that exposed residents had 5.7 times higher blood cobalt concentrations than the nearby control group, while mine workers had 13.1 times higher concentrations (Banza et al 2009, Nkulu et al 2018)

  • Shifting to 100% EV sales and non-combustion electricity generation could result in 111 000 avoided premature deaths by 2050 (American Lung Association 2022) Electrification of public buses and rail in the United States is estimated to result in 4200 fewer deaths per year due to reductions in criteria air pollutants (Data for Progress 2021)

  • Shifting to 100% EV sales and non-combustion electricity generation could result in $1.2 trillion in health benefits by 2050 (American Lung Association 2022) Electrification of public buses and rail in the United States is estimated to result in approximately $100 billion in avoided health damages (Data for Progress 2021) US study finds that light-duty vehicle electrification in large metropolitan areas could lead to public health benefits equivalent to 3.4 ¢ mile−1 to 11.5 ¢ mile−1 driven, depending on the region (Choma et al 2020)

Access Dimension

Resource availability

Resource cost

Technology adoption

Program participation

Public EV charger availability

Home EV charging availability

Up-front technology costs

EV charging costs

EV adoption

EV rebate allocation

EV rebate awareness

Likelihood of public EV charger access (odds ratio), rate of EV chargers per 1000 households

Cost difference between EV and internal combustion engine models ($)

Relative cost difference between public and at-home EV charging

Relative EV adoption by income and zip code; income disparity between used EV and ICE vehicle purchasers ($); proportion of purchases by vehicle type and race/ethnicity (%); likelihood of EV ownership by homeownership status; proportion of households owning EVs (%)

EV subsidy allocation by income and disadvantage score (%), share of EV incentive dollars by income (%)

Share of households aware of EV rebates (%)

Proportion of households with parking availability near electrical outlet (%)

  • Black and Hispanic majority block groups are 0.7 times as likely to have access to public chargers compared to no-majority reference groups, with the disparity increasing for publicly funded charging stations which are half as likely to exist in Black and Hispanic majority block groups (Hsu and Fingerman 2021) In California, disadvantaged communities have approximately 0.67 public level 2 EV chargers and 0.61 DC fast chargers per 1000 households, compared to non-disadvantaged communities with 0.92 public level 2 EV chargers and 0.13 DC fast chargers per 1000 households (Canepa et al 2019)

  • Researchers estimate that approximately 50% of US households park a vehicle within 25 ft of an electrical outlet at home (Axsen and Kurani 2012) According to the 2020 RECS, approximately 55% of US households (excluding apartments with five or more units) are able to park a car within 20 ft of an outlet (EIA 2022a)

  • Recent estimates report that EV models still cost between $8000 more for short-range cars and $21 000 more for long-range SUVs than comparable conventional vehicles (Lutsey and Nicholas 2019)

  • Public charging is typically 2–3 times more expensive than the per-kWh prices of at home EV charging (Bauer et al 2021)

  • Internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle adoption is approximately two times higher in high-income zip codes than low-income zip codes, but EV adoption in high-income zip codes ranges from 3 to 5.7 times higher (Bauer et al 2021)

    The median income for households purchasing used plug in electric vehicles (PEVs) in California between 2012 and 2014 was $150 000 compared to $90 000 for used ICE vehicles (Turrentine et al 2018)

    Black and Hispanic car buyers make up 41% of gasoline vehicle purchases, yet they account for only 12% of EV purchases (Muehlegger and Rapson 2018)

    Homeowners are approximately three times more likely than renters to own an EV (Davis 2019)

    In California, less than 0.5% of households in disadvantaged communities (communities affected by combination of economic, health, and environmental burdens according to an index defined by CalEnviroScreen) own electric vehicles compared to 1.7% of households in non-disadvantaged communities (Canepa et al 2019)

  • From 2010 to 2018, the bottom 75% of census tracts (based on median income) in California received only 38% of the total EV subsidies, while the top 12.5% of the most advantaged census tracts (according to CalEnviroScreen scores) received 25% of the total rebate amount (Guo and Kontou 2021)

    Disadvantaged communities (according to CalEnviroScreen scores) received 77% fewer rebates per 1000 households than advantaged communities (Ju et al 2020) From 2009 to 2012, US taxpayers with adjusted gross incomes greater than $75 000 received approximately 90% of the total federal electric vehicle incentive dollars, and the bottom 80% of US taxpayers received approximately 10% of the federal EV incentives (Borenstein and Davis 2016)

  • Less than 40% of surveyed low- and moderate-income households in California reported awareness of state rebates to reduce the cost of purchasing EVs (Pierce et al 2020)

Indicator

Metric

Measurement

Livelihood Dimension

Employment

Safety and security

Number of jobs

Conflict and/or violence

Cumulative job losses (#), relative direct labor hours

Relative share of workers in vulnerable occupations by race and education level (%)

Proportion of child labor by industry (%), share of mines with children present (%), cumulative child labor estimates (#)

Workforce representation

  • A recent report found that without significant policy efforts, a shift to 50% BEV sales by 2030 could result in approximately 75 000 lost jobs in the US auto sector (Barrett and Bivens 2021)

    The California Air Resources Board (CARB) estimates that California’s mandate of 100% EV sales by 2035 will result in 64 700 job losses throughout the economy, but there will also be job creation in other sectors which leads to an estimated net loss of 39 800 jobs by 2040 (Lopez 2022)

    Industry leaders have reported that manufacturing an EV requires 30% fewer hours per unit than manufacturing a traditional gasoline vehicle (Hackett 2017)

  • Black workers make up 12.5% of the US economy-wide workforce, but 16.6% of workers in the auto sector, and workers without a bachelor’s degree make up 62.2% of the economywide workforce but 74.6% of the auto sector (Barrett and Bivens 2021)

  • Cobalt, a critical mineral for EV production, is mostly mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) where child labor is prevalent in the mining industry. A large-scale survey found that in households reporting child labor, 23% of those children worked in the mining industry, while another survey found that 29% of artisanal mines have children present (Faber et al 2017, BGR 2019)

    An estimated 40 000 children work in dangerous conditions in the Southern Katanga region (UNCTAD 2020)

Indicator

Metric

Measurement