Can Clean Heating in Winter in Northern China Reduce Air Pollution?—Empirical Analysis Based on the PSM-DID Method

Si Wang,Qiang Liu,Demei Sun,Qiaojie Huang

doi:10.3390/en15051839

Abstract

In northern China, a large volume of coal is consumed for heating in winter, resulting in frequent smog and air pollution, which has a serious effect on people’s health and quality of life. Clean heating is a national important livelihood strategy related to residents’ warmth. Whether haze weather can be effectively reduced and whether the heating energy structure can really be improved needs to be verified. This study takes 115 heating cities in the northern area as the research objects, takes 12 pilot cities implementing clean heating policy as the treatment group, employs the Propensity Score Matching method to match the non-pilot cities to get the reasonable control group city, uses the double-difference method to carry out the quantitative test on the implementation effect of the clean heating policy. The results show that clean heating in northern China reduces the air pollution in winter, and the air pollution level in winter decreases 46.6% after the implementation of the policy. Clean heating is an effective environmental regulation method that can control the level of winter air pollution from the source.

Highlights

Clean heating is a policy that benefits about 500 million people in 15 provinces
A large volume of coal is consumed for heating in northern China in winter, which leads to frequent haze and air pollution, which seriously affects people’s health and quality of life
Based on the panel data of 115 heating cities in northern China, this study applied the PSM-difference method (DID) method to empirically test the impact of clean heating on air pollution in northern China

Summary

Introduction

Clean heating is a policy that benefits about 500 million people in 15 provinces. It mainly refers to the use of clean energy such as natural gas and electric power, combined with the construction of a heat supply network and energy-saving buildings can realize low emission and low pollution heating. Northern China, which has a rigid demand for heating in winter, covers about 70% of the land area. For a long time, the ratio of clean heating in some areas was relatively low, especially in towns and rural areas, where a large number of scattered coal burning and low-efficiency small boilers are used for heating in winter, which aggravates the severity of air pollution. Studies have confirmed that the main cause of winter haze is the pollution caused by heating in winter emissions [1]. At the fourteenth meeting of the central financial and economic leading group, General Secretary

Methods

Results

Conclusion