Spatial variations of PM2.5 emissions and social welfare induced by clean heating transition: A gridded cost-benefit analysis

Abstract

Clean heating (CH) is regard as a key strategy to address the serious air pollution problem in northern China. A “one-fit-all” CH strategy will harm social welfare and engender resistance, due to the differences in heating habits and residents' income between urban and rural areas. To solve this problem, a 5 km × 5 km gridded cost-benefit analysis model for CH is build. Taking the case city as an example, an improved CH solution integrating multiple heat sources is proposed. By utilizing ISH resources, which are low-cost and low-emission-intensity, the improved solution reduces heating-induced PM2.5 emissions to one-fifth, and achieves higher net social benefits than existing CH strategies. Moreover, the spatial distributions of PM2.5 emission reductions and indoor and outdoor health benefits induced by CH strategy, including coal-to-gas/electricity and the improved strategy we propose, are simulated; revealing that the spillover effects of pollutants make CH will somewhat inevitably bring about a transfer of social welfare from rural areas to urban areas, but this can be compensated by opposite direction subsidies.