China is the world's largest carbon emitter and suffers from severe air pollution. About one million deaths in China were attributable to air pollution in 2017. Alternative energy vehicles (AEVs), e.g. electric, hydrogen fuel cell, and natural gas vehicles, can help achieve both carbon emission mitigation and air quality improvement. However, climate, air quality and health co-benefit of AEVs powered by deeply decarbonized electricity generation remain poorly quantified. Here, we conduct a quantitative integrated assessment of the air quality, health, carbon emission mitigation and economic benefits of AEV deployment as the electricity grid decarbonizes in China. We find population-weighted annual PM2.5 and summer O3 concentration can decrease as large as 5.7μgm−3 and 4.9ppb. Annual avoided premature mortalities and years of life lost resulting from improved ambient air pollution can be as large as ~329,000 persons and ~1,611,000 years. We thus show that maximizing climate, air quality and health benefits of AEV deployment in China requires rapid decarbonization of the power system.
This dataset provides the data generated during the project analyzing ‘Food Consumption Strategies for Addressing Air Pollution, Climate Change, Water Use, and Public Health in China’. It includes the code for generating the alternative dietary scenarios, for analyzing the health impacts of alternative diets, and for visualization of results.
Chen, Xu; Gallagher, Kevin P.; Mauzerall, Denise L.
Abstract:
Global power generation must rapidly decarbonize by mid-century to meet the goal of stabilizing global warming below 2 degree Celsius. To meet this objective, multilateral development banks (MDBs) have gradually reduced fossil fuel and increased renewable energy financing. Meanwhile, globally active national development finance institutions (DFIs) from Japan and South Korea have continued to finance overseas coal plants. Less is known about the increasingly active Chinese DFIs. Here we construct a new dataset of China’s policy banks’ overseas power generation financing and compare their technology choices and impact on generation capacity with MDBs and Japanese and South Korean DFIs. We find Chinese DFI power financing since 2000 has dramatically increased, surpassing other East Asian national DFIs and the major MDBs’ collective public sector power financing in 2013. As most Chinese DFI financing is currently in coal, decarbonization of their power investments will be critical in reducing future carbon emissions from recipient countries.
Li, Zhongshu; Gallagher, Kevin P.; Mauzerall, Denise L.
Abstract:
The dataset include a list of power projects outside of China that receive Chinese foreign direct investment from 2000 to 2018. Detailed information including project capacity, location, share of Chinese ownership, type of power generating technologies are collected for each power project.
