Accelerating China’s power sector decarbonization can save lives: integrating public health goals into power sector planning decisions
Accelerating China’s power sector decarbonization can save lives: integrating public health goals into power sector planning decisions
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DOI：
10.1088/1748-9326/acf84b
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发表时间：
2023-09
影响因子：
6.7
通讯作者：
Qi Luo;F. Garcia‐Menendez;Jiang Lin;Gang He;Jeremiah X. Johnson
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Qi Luo;F. Garcia‐Menendez;Jiang Lin;Gang He;Jeremiah X. Johnson
中国是2022年全球最大的温室气体排放国，目标是到2060年实现碳中和。由于目前对煤炭的依赖，电力部门将在这一脱碳过程中发挥重要作用。之前的研究已经量化了脱碳带来的空气质量共同效益，或者研究了消除电力部门温室气体排放的途径。然而，很少有人联合评估加速脱碳对电力系统和公共健康的潜在影响。此外，大多数分析都将空气质量改善视为脱碳的共同利益，而不是脱碳过程中的目标。在此，我们通过一个整合了碳、污染物和健康影响的电力系统规划模型，探索在加速脱碳情景下中国未来的能源技术途径。我们将电厂排放的健康影响纳入电力系统决策过程，量化每种情景下脱碳对公共健康的影响。我们发现，与参考脱碳途径相比，更严格的碳排放上限（每个时期的排放量比参考途径低20%）将对公共健康产生显着的共同利益，导致电力部门健康影响减少22%。尽管实现这一低排放目标需要额外的资本投资，但气候和健康效益的价值将超过额外成本，导致2021年至2050年的净效益为8240亿美元。另一种加速脱碳途径比参考案例提前五年实现零排放，由于早期脱碳期的资本成本较高，净效益较低。将空气污染影响作为脱碳的目标，可以进一步减少二氧化碳排放和对健康的负面影响。替代的低成本解决方案也表明，系统成本的微小变化可能导致未来能源组合的显著不同，这表明多样化的脱碳途径是可行的。
China, the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter in 2022, aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. The power sector will play a major role in this decarbonization process due to its current reliance on coal. Prior studies have quantified air quality co-benefits from decarbonization or investigated pathways to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector. However, few have jointly assessed the potential impacts of accelerating decarbonization on electric power systems and public health. Additionally, most analyses have treated air quality improvements as co-benefits of decarbonization, rather than a target during decarbonization. Here, we explore future energy technology pathways in China under accelerated decarbonization scenarios with a power system planning model that integrates carbon, pollutant, and health impacts. We integrate the health effects of power plant emissions into the power system decision-making process, quantifying the public health impacts of decarbonization under each scenario. We find that compared with a reference decarbonization pathway, a stricter cap (20% lower emissions than the reference pathway in each period) on carbon emissions would yield significant co-benefits to public health, leading to a 22% reduction in power sector health impacts. Although extra capital investment is required to achieve this low emission target, the value of climate and health benefits would exceed the additional costs, leading to $824 billion net benefits from 2021 to 2050. Another accelerated decarbonization pathway that achieves zero emissions five years earlier than the reference case would result in lower net benefits due to higher capital costs during earlier decarbonization periods. Treating air pollution impacts as a target in decarbonization can further mitigate both CO2 emissions and negative health effects. Alternative low-cost solutions also show that small variations in system costs can result in significantly different future energy portfolios, suggesting that diverse decarbonization pathways are viable.