IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v14y2022i15p9037-d870199.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Wildfire Smoke, Air Quality, and Renewable Energy—Examining the Impacts of the 2020 Wildfire Season in Washington State

Author

Listed:
  • Augusto Zanin Bertoletti

    (Power System Research Group, Washington State University Vancouver, Vancouver, WA 98686, USA
    Current address: School of Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University Vancouver, 14204 NE Salmon Creek Ave., Vancouver, WA 98686, USA.)

  • Theresa Phan

    (Power System Research Group, Washington State University Vancouver, Vancouver, WA 98686, USA
    Current address: School of Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University Vancouver, 14204 NE Salmon Creek Ave., Vancouver, WA 98686, USA.)

  • Josue Campos do Prado

    (Power System Research Group, Washington State University Vancouver, Vancouver, WA 98686, USA
    Current address: School of Engineering and Computer Science, Washington State University Vancouver, 14204 NE Salmon Creek Ave., Vancouver, WA 98686, USA.)

Abstract

The 2020 wildfire season was devastating, setting negative records in many states and regions around the world, especially in North America. Five of the six largest fires in California’s recorded history burned in 2020. In the Pacific Northwest region of the United States, Oregon and eastern Washington almost doubled their 10-year average of burnt acres recently. Depending on wind speed and direction conditions, the smoke from wildfires may significantly impact the air quality and reduce solar photovoltaic (PV) generation even in regions located hundreds of kilometers away from high-risk zones. Thus, during those periods, power system operators must ensure reliability and resilience across power generation, transmission, and distribution, while minimizing carbon emissions that can harm the air quality of the affected communities during wildfire events even more. This paper analyzes the impact of the 2020 wildfire season in the state of Washington, verifying the wind speed and solar irradiance data, and correlating these with the particulate matter 2.5 (PM 2.5) concentration and aerosol optical thickness (AOT) through a multi-variable regression model. The results show that PV production may be significantly reduced during the periods of high concentration of wildfire smoke and reduced wind speeds, thus highlighting the need for efficient and sustainable power system operations during wildfire events.

Suggested Citation

  • Augusto Zanin Bertoletti & Theresa Phan & Josue Campos do Prado, 2022. "Wildfire Smoke, Air Quality, and Renewable Energy—Examining the Impacts of the 2020 Wildfire Season in Washington State," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-17, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:15:p:9037-:d:870199
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/15/9037/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/15/9037/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alexandra Witze, 2020. "The Arctic is burning like never before — and that’s bad news for climate change," Nature, Nature, vol. 585(7825), pages 336-337, September.
    2. Shannon A. Gonick & Nicole A. Errett, 2018. "Integrating Climate Change into Hazard Mitigation Planning: A Survey of State Hazard Mitigation Officers," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-9, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Maddison Seeley & Hamish Hede & Mitchell Bylart & John Rodwell, 2023. "Diagnosing the Institutional Forces Impacting Australia’s Aerial Firefighting Capability," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(2), pages 1-15, January.
    2. Hong Wen Yu & S. Y. Simon Wang & Wan Yu Liu, 2024. "Estimating wildfire potential in Taiwan under different climate change scenarios," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 177(1), pages 1-26, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Zhichao Xu & Wei Shan & Ying Guo & Chengcheng Zhang & Lisha Qiu, 2022. "Swamp Wetlands in Degraded Permafrost Areas Release Large Amounts of Methane and May Promote Wildfires through Friction Electrification," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(15), pages 1-28, July.
    2. Brodmerkel, Anna & Carpenter, Adam T. & Morley, Kevin M., 2020. "Federal financial resources for disaster mitigation and resilience in the U.S. water sector," Utilities Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    3. Zhongwei Liu & Jonathan M. Eden & Bastien Dieppois & Matthew Blackett, 2022. "A global view of observed changes in fire weather extremes: uncertainties and attribution to climate change," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 173(1), pages 1-20, July.
    4. Vera Kuklina & Oleg Sizov & Elena Rasputina & Irina Bilichenko & Natalia Krasnoshtanova & Viktor Bogdanov & Andrey N. Petrov, 2022. "Fires on Ice: Emerging Permafrost Peatlands Fire Regimes in Russia’s Subarctic Taiga," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(3), pages 1-18, February.
    5. Ilya Stepanov & Igor Makarov & Ekaterina Makarova & Elizaveta Smolovik, 2023. "Climate change and challenges to sustainable development in the Russian Arctic," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 176(4), pages 1-18, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:15:p:9037-:d:870199. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.