School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.
Nat Commun. 2022 Aug 27;13(1):5061. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-32656-8.
Climate change mitigation measures can yield substantial air quality improvements while emerging clean air measures in developing countries can also lead to CO emission mitigation co-benefits by affecting the local energy system. Here, we evaluate the effect of China's stringent clean air actions on its energy use and CO emissions from 2013-2020. We find that widespread phase-out and upgrades of outdated, polluting, and inefficient combustion facilities during clean air actions have promoted the transformation of the country's energy system. The co-benefits of China's clean air measures far outweigh the additional CO emissions of end-of-pipe devices, realizing a net accumulative reduction of 2.43 Gt CO from 2013-2020, exceeding the accumulated CO emission increase in China (2.03 Gt CO) during the same period. Our study indicates that China's efforts to tackle air pollution induce considerable climate benefit, and measures with remarkable CO reduction co-benefits deserve further attention in future policy design.
气候变化缓解措施可以显著改善空气质量，而发展中国家新兴的清洁空气措施也可以通过影响当地能源系统来实现 CO 排放缓解的协同效益。在这里，我们评估了中国从 2013 年到 2020 年实施严格的清洁空气行动对其能源使用和 CO 排放的影响。我们发现，清洁空气行动中广泛淘汰和升级老旧、污染和低效的燃烧设施，促进了中国能源系统的转型。中国清洁空气措施的协同效益远远超过了末端治理装置的额外 CO 排放，实现了 2013-2020 年累计减少 2.43 亿吨 CO，超过了同期中国 CO 排放的累计增加量（2.03 亿吨 CO）。我们的研究表明，中国为解决空气污染问题所做的努力带来了可观的气候效益，具有显著 CO 减排协同效益的措施值得在未来的政策设计中进一步关注。
