Candelaria Bergero, Jing Cheng, Qiang Zhang, Yang Ou, Haewon McJeon, Destenie Nock, Ines Azevedo, Steven J. Davis

Pathways to net-zero reduce GHG emissions and improve air quality, but the magnitude and distribution of these improvements will depend on specific mitigation decisions, such as the amount of carbon dioxide removals (CDR). Here, we combine a series of models and datasets to analyze community-scale PM2.5 impacts across the contiguous U.S. of net-zero scenarios with different levels of CDR. Both the high- and low-CDR scenarios avoid many PM2.5-related deaths compared to a reference scenario, decreasing from around 200,000 to 160,000 and 130,000 deaths in 2050 in the high- and low-CDR scenarios, respectively. However, the low-CDR pathway leads to lower residual emissions and brings larger health benefits that disproportionately affect non-white and low-income groups. Our results thus suggest that in the absence of concerted transition planning, large-scale CDR deployment could be at odds with the equal distribution of climate mitigation-related health benefits in the U.S.