Air Quality

Our air quality team serves a wide range of clients and supports the development of environmental reviews, air permitting, compliance, health risk assessments, due diligence studies, and expert witness support. Our employee-owners have the expertise and experience to approach complex projects with an eye toward providing technically sound results and actionable insights.

Regulatory Experience
By providing our services across all markets, we remain close to the changing air quality and greenhouse gas regulatory environment, and we bring a strong understanding of where the regulations are heading and why. Our relationships with regulators and clear-eyed view of the regulatory environment helps us provide our clients with reliable insights for their most demanding projects. We are highly experienced with a variety of regulatory frameworks including CEQA, SEPA, Cleaner Air Oregon, and NEPA.

Climate Action Planning and Decarbonization
Effective air quality management involves taking measures to reduce pollutants that lead to negative health impacts, and to reduce carbon-based emissions that exacerbate global climate change. Our team is highly involved in climate action planning and is experienced supporting our clients in carbon trading and emission offset programs.

Air Modeling
Our air modeling team is proficient with the EPA’s recommended regulatory models and able to provide rapid execution of those models using a high-performance Linux cluster. We have developed a python-based software toolkit that allows for rapid deployment of models, post-processing, and customizable visualizations. Our toolkit has helped us keep pace with evolving regulations such as one-hour nitrogen dioxide (NO2) compliance via Monte Carlo simulations. ESA’s modeling work supports air permitting, health risk assessments, environmental reviews, odor analyses, litigation, and atmospheric research.

Modeling capabilities include:

Air Monitoring Analyses (CMB, PMF, Unmix, HYSPLIT)
Emissions modeling (AEDT, MOVES, CalEEMod, EMFAC, OFFROAD, Vessel emissions)
Dispersion models (AERMOD, CALPUFF, SCICHEM, HYSPLIT, AgDISP)
Meteorological Modeling (AERMET, CALMET, MMIF)
Health Impacts Assessment (“Friant Ranch” analysis – BenMAP, CMAQ)
Statistical analyses
Odor modeling

Modern Work Products
We have a proven track record of supporting clients in the completion of reports, plans, research papers, permits, assessments, policy analyses, compliance measures, resource management, and public involvement activities. These documents are prepared using the latest technology that enable us to convey project outcomes in clear and concise ways, including:

Data dashboards
Dynamic visualizations
Interactive storyboards

Innovation
We also embrace innovative approaches to solving unique air quality issues that support projects such as:

Development and use of high-performance cluster computing
Researching and applying emerging technologies
Emission reduction credit justification studies

Our creative approaches result in timely and defensible deliverables that meet the high standards of both ourselves and our clients. We are known for our scientific rigor and ability to effectively communicate complex outcomes.