Abstract
Air pollution is the single most important environmental health risk, causing about 7 million premature deaths annually worldwide. China is the world’s largest emitter of anthropogenic air pollutants, which causes major negative health consequences. The Chinese government has implemented several policies to reduce air pollution, with success in some but far from all sectors. In addition to the health benefits, reducing air pollution will have side-benefits, such as an increase in the electricity generated by the solar photovoltaic panels via an increase in surface solar irradiance through a reduction of haze and aerosol-impacted clouds. We use the global aerosol-climate model ECHAM6-HAM2 with the bottom-up emissions inventory from the Community Emission Data System and quantify the geographically specific increases in generation and economic revenue to the Chinese solar photovoltaic fleet as a result of reducing or eliminating air pollution from the energy, industrial, transport, and residential and commercial sectors. We find that by 2040, the gains will be substantial: the projected solar photovoltaic fleet would produce between 85–158 TWh/year of additional power in clean compared to polluted air, generating US$6.9–10.1 billion of additional annual revenues in the solar photovoltaic sector alone. Furthermore, we quantify the cost of adopting best-practice emission standards in all sectors and find that the revenue gains from the increased solar photovoltaic generation could offset up to about 13–17% of the costs of strong air pollution control measures designed to reach near-zero emissions in all sectors. Hence, reducing air pollution in China will not only have clear health benefits, but the side-effect of increased solar power generation would also offset a sizeable share of the costs of air pollution control measures.
Highlights
Air pollution is the largest environmental cause of health damage and premature death worldwide [1]
The Chinese central and municipal governments have implemented anti-pollution measures similar to those in industrialized economies. These include the installation and operation of pollutioncontrol equipment on major point sources, such as coal power plants, and on motor vehicles; the replacement of the burning of coal for residential and commercial heating with natural gas or propane; the closure of industrial plants where pollution-control equipment is not economically feasible or plants located in densely populated areas; and the gradual replacement of coal power with renewables, such as solar and wind power [8]. Some of these policies have been successful, they do not represent the best possible outcomes: coalburning power and industrial plants can be retrofitted with state-of-the-art pollution-control equipment to reach near-zero emissions similar to or even lower than those from a natural gas combined-cycle unit; road transport and navigation can switch to cleaner fuels with lower content of sulfur and install stricter pollution-control equipment; and residential and commercial heating and cooking can be switched from coal to natural gas nationwide [8,9,10]
Past air pollution control measures have led to an increase in solar irradiation: compared to the counter-factual emissions levels without pollution control, the air pollution control policies implemented in the energy sector since 2006 have increased surface solar irradiance by up to 3.5% (5 W/m2)
Summary
Air pollution is the largest environmental cause of health damage and premature death worldwide [1]. The Chinese central and municipal governments have implemented anti-pollution measures similar to those in industrialized economies These include the installation and operation of pollutioncontrol equipment on major point sources, such as coal power plants, and on motor vehicles; the replacement of the burning of coal for residential and commercial heating with natural gas or propane; the closure of industrial plants where pollution-control equipment is not economically feasible or plants located in densely populated areas; and the gradual replacement of coal power with renewables, such as solar and wind power [8]. We investigate the effect of pollution control on solar radiation, assuming that highly ambitious policies are implemented successfully
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