Co-benefits of China’s climate policy for air quality and human health in China and transboundary regions in 2030
Name
Li_2019_Environ._Res._Lett._14_084006.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.19 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
111715203d8d3e76824cdc05e27e7c96
Author(s)
Li, Mingwei
Zhang, Da
Li, Chiao-Ting
Selin, Noelle E
Karplus, Valerie Jean
Date Issued
July 22, 2019
Journal
Environmental Research Lettters
Publisher
Institute of Physics Publishing
Citation
Li, Mingwei et al. "Co-benefits of China’s climate policy for air quality and human health in China and transboundary regions in 2030." Environmental Research Lettters, 14, 8, (2019): 084006 © 2019 The Author(s)
Version
Final published version
Abstract
Climate policies targeting CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels can simultaneously reduce emissions of air pollutants and their precursors, thus mitigating air pollution and associated health impacts. Previous work has examined co-benefits of climate policy from reducing PM₂.₅ in rapidly-developing countries such as China, but have not examined co-benefits from ozone and its transboundary impact for both PM₂.₅ and ozone. Here, we compare the air quality and health co-benefits of China's climate policy on both PM₂.₅ and ozone in China to their co-benefits in three downwind and populous countries (South Korea, Japan and the United States) using a coupled modeling framework. In a policy scenario consistent with China's pledge to peak CO₂ emissions in approximately 2030, avoided premature deaths from ozone reductions are 54 300 (95% confidence interval: 37 100-71 000) in China in 2030, nearly 60% of those from PM₂.₅. Total avoided premature deaths in South Korea, Japan, and the US are 1200 (900-1600), 3500 (2800-4300), and 1900 (1400-2500), respectively. Total avoided deaths in South Korea and Japan are dominated by reductions in PM₂.₅-related mortality, but ozone plays a more important role in the US. Similar to co-benefits for PM₂.₅ in China, co-benefits of China's policy for ozone and for both pollutants in those downwind countries also rise with increasing policy stringency. Keywords: climate policy; air quality; human health; co-benefits; transboundary air pollution
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Joint Program on the Science & Policy of Global Change
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Data, Systems, and Society
Sloan School of Management
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 unported license
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DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ab26ca
