Abstract
High levels of air pollution pose an urgent social and public health challenge in many Asian regions. This study evaluates the role of key factors that determined the changes in emission levels in China, India and Japan over the past 25 years. While emissions of air pollutants have been declining in Japan since the 1990s, China and India have experienced a rapid growth in pollution levels in recent years. Around 2005, control measures for sulfur emissions started to deliver expected reductions in China, followed by cuts in nitrogen oxides ten years later. Despite recent policy interventions, growing emission trends in India persist. A decomposition analysis of emission-driving factors indicates that emission levels would have been at least two-times higher without the improvements in energy intensity and efficiency, combined with end-of-pipe measures. Due to the continuous reliance on fossil fuels, the abatement effect of a cleaner fuel mix was in most cases significantly smaller than other factors. A reassessment of emission projections developed in the past suggests a decisive impact of energy and environmental policies. It is expected that targeted legislative instruments will play a dominant role in achieving future air-quality goals in Asia.
Highlights
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution ranks as the greatest environmental risk factor for human health worldwide
The statistical information used in this work has been extracted from the 2017 edition of databases published by the International Energy Agency (IEA): IEA World Energy Statistics and Balances, sections
The evolution of Chinese energy intensity is analyzed in detail by the IEA [6], which associates the large improvements with high rates of capital stock turnover and related investments in modern technologies
Summary
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), air pollution ranks as the greatest environmental risk factor for human health worldwide. Around three million premature deaths are linked to outdoor (ambient) air pollution emitted by power plants, industrial facilities, vehicles and ships, while the use of polluting fuels for indoor cooking and heating causes an additional three million premature deaths from household air pollution [1]. The latter is primarily linked to energy poverty and the traditional use of solid biomass for cooking [2]. More than 50% of people living in Asia are exposed to concentrations of fine particles that do not comply with the least-stringent
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