Air quality and health benefits of increasing carbon mitigation tech-innovation in China

• Published in: Environmental science and pollution research international Vol. 30; no. 3; pp. 6786 - 6804
• Main Authors: Jin, Shunlin, Wang, Weidong, Ostic, Dragana, Zhang, Caijing, Lu, Na, Wang, Dong, Ni, Wenli
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2023
• Subjects: Air Pollutants - analysis; Air Pollution - analysis; Air Pollution - prevention & control; Aquatic Pollution; Atmospheric Protection/Air Quality Control/Air Pollution; Carbon - analysis; China; Coal - analysis; Earth and Environmental Science; Ecotoxicology; Environment; Environmental Chemistry; Environmental Health; Environmental Pollution - analysis; Research Article; Waste Water Technology; Water Management; Water Pollution Control; China; Air quality; Mediating effect model; Carbon mitigation tech-innovation; Health benefits
• ISSN: 0944-1344; 1614-7499
• DOI: 10.1007/s11356-022-22602-y

Most studies on the short-term local benefits of carbon mitigation technologies on air quality improvement and health focus on specific technologies such as biofuels or carbon sequestration technologies, while ignoring the overall role of the growing scale of low-carbon technologies. Based on STIRPAT model and EKC hypothesis, this paper takes 30 provinces in China from 2004 to 2016 as research samples. We builded the panel double fixed effect model to empirical analysis of climate change on carbon mitigation tech-innovation suppressing the influence of haze pollution, on this basis, the mediating effect model was used to explore the mediation function of industrial structure and energy structure. Meanwhile, we drawed on the existing studies on air quality and health benefits, and quantify the co-benefits of carbon mitigation tech-innovation on health through the equivalent substitution formula. It shows that a 1% increase in the number of low-carbon patent applications can reduce haze pollution by 0.066%. According to this estimate, to 2029, China’s carbon mitigation tech-innovation could reduce PM2.5 concentration to 15 μg/m
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preventing 5.597 million premature deaths. Moreover, carbon mitigation tech-innovation can also indirectly inhibit haze pollution by triggering more systematic economic structure changes such as energy and industrial structure. Additionally, we found that the role of gray tech-innovation (GT) related to improving the efficiency of fossil energy is stronger than that of clean technology (CT) related to the use of renewable energy. This suggests that for a large economy such as China, where coal is still the dominant source of energy consumption, the short-term local benefits of improving air quality and health through the use of gray tech-innovation to improve energy and industrial structure are still important to balance the cost of carbon mitigation.