Health Impacts of Carbon Neutrality in China under Different Technological Pathways

Da Gao*, Chenfei Qu*, Bin Zhao, Shuxiao Wang, Xiaodan Huang, Yisheng Sun, Yueqi Jiang, Zhongfeng Xu, Xiaocong Wang, Yicong He, Jiewen Shen, Dejia Yin, Haotian Zheng, Hongrong Shi, Zhe Jiang, Xiao-Wen Zeng, Yun Zhu, Biwu Chu, Hong He, Xiliang Zhang, Da Zhang (*contribute equally)

Achieving carbon neutrality could significantly enhance China’s air quality and health. However, the differences in benefits among various carbon neutrality pathways and their distributional impacts are not well understood. This study introduces an integrated modeling framework combining an energy-economic model with detailed low-carbon technologies, a climate and atmospheric transport model, and an indoor air pollution exposure model to evaluate three technological pathways to carbon neutrality in China. We found that a transition pathway based on wind and solar offers greater air quality co-benefits than a biomass-based pathway but imposes a disproportionately higher cost burden on less developed regions in China.

Estimating health co-benefits of climate policies in China: an application of the regional emissions-air quality-climate-health (REACH) framework

Chenfei Qu, Xi Yang, Da Zhang and Xiliang Zhang

Published in Climate Change Economics, 2020.

Climate policies can bring local air quality and health co-benefits, which may partially or entirely offset the costs of implementing these policies. In this study, we introduce an integrated health co-benefits assessment model, the Regional Emissions-Air quality-Climate-Health (REACH) Modeling Framework, which is capable of evaluating the impact of policies on air pollution-related mortality and morbidity in the whole economic system overtime at the provincial level for China. We first provide a detailed description of the modeling framework and conduct a case study to estimate the health benefits of different climate policy scenarios. We show that a scenario consistent with the 2-degree target that peaks China’s emissions before 2025 could avoid around 190 thousand premature deaths in 2030. The health benefits could partially or fully cover the policy costs under different assumptions of the value of a statistical life (VSL). Our framework also illustrates that estimated costs and health benefits distribute unevenly across regions in China.