China’s clean heating policies may have prevented over 23,000 premature deaths in 2021, study finds

[beijingwalker]

China’s clean heating policies may have prevented over 23,000 premature deaths in 2021, study finds​

• Concentrations of hazardous PM2.5 particles fell by 41 per cent in Beijing and 27 other cities from 2015 to 2021 due to the policies, researchers say
• The government introduced a winter clean heating plan for the north of the country in 2017, aiming to reduce air pollution

Published: 6:30am, 2 Feb, 2023

Air quality in Beijing and other northern Chinese cities improved from 2015 to 2021 because of a clean heating plan, according to a new study. Photo: Getty Images

China’s clean heating policies have improved air quality in the north of the country and potentially prevented more than 23,000 premature deaths in 2021 compared to 2015, according to a new study.
From 2015 to 2021, concentrations of PM2.5 – the fine and hazardous particles that are a key indicator of air pollution – dropped by 41 per cent in Beijing, Tianjin and 26 surrounding cities, known as the “2+26” cities, and by 13 per cent in other northern cities because of the policies, the study found.

“This demonstrates the effectiveness of stricter clean heating policies on PM2.5 in ‘2+26’ cities,” according to researchers from the University of Birmingham and Nankai University in Tianjin.
They said that as a result of the drop in PM2.5 concentrations, premature deaths caused by winter heating fell from 169,016 in 2015 to 145,460 in 2021. That suggested 23,556 premature deaths had been prevented in 2021 because of the clean heating policies.

China has centralised winter heating systems that are usually switched on from mid-November and switched off again in mid-March. This “heating season” is one of the largest energy consumers in the world. The main energy source is coal, which provided more than 80 per cent of heating in China in 2016, according to a Greenpeace analysis of government data. Biomass burning is also often used in rural areas.

A 2020 Peking University study estimated that in 2014 heating from coal and biomass burning contributed 13 per cent and 43 per cent, respectively, of the outdoor and indoor PM2.5 concentrations in urban China.
The Chinese government introduced an action plan in 2013 to tackle air pollution, with an emphasis on controlling coal consumption and on industry making the switch from coal to cleaner fuels and electricity.

It was followed by a winter clean heating plan for the north of the country in 2017, aiming to reduce air pollution from heating systems. It set a target of increasing the level of clean heating being used in northern China to 70 per cent by 2021 compared to the 2016 level, and to 100 per cent in urban areas of Beijing and surrounding cities by 2021.

China has seen significant progress on improving air quality over the past decade. The annual average PM2.5 concentrations in 339 Chinese cities under the national air quality monitoring network fell from 72 micrograms per cubic metre in 2013 to 30 in 2021.

But it is challenging to evaluate the effectiveness of clean heating policies because of the complex physical and chemical processes in the atmosphere as well as other socioeconomic factors that can affect pollution levels, according to the latest study.

The researchers said they used a new approach to quantify the impact of clean heating policies that combined machine learning and a synthetic control method.
They categorised 189 cities across China into five groups – three experimental groups of cities with centralised heating systems, one control group of cities without such systems, and one group of southern cities located near places where centralised heating is used.

A machine learning model was first used to strip out the effects of weather from observed pollutant concentration data in the 189 cities.

The researchers then used the synthetic control method to build an artificial control city that was comparable to the experimental cities. The artificial city was built from the weighted average of a group of control cities by adding data on pollutants in the experimental cities before their heating was switched on.

The differences observed after the policy intervention could be deemed as its impact, according to the study.

It said the contribution from winter heating to annual average PM2.5 concentrations in mainland China fell from 5.7 micrograms per cubic metre in 2015 to 3.8 in 2021. That showed the effectiveness of the clean heating policies, the study said.

Corresponding author Zongbo Shi, professor of atmospheric biogeochemistry at the University of Birmingham, said clean heating policies had major health benefits and other parts of China should follow the approach of the “2+26” cities.

“Heating remains a major source of air pollution. Speeding up the decarbonisation of heating will bring benefits to both air quality and health,” Shi said, adding that other parts of the world should also focus on decarbonisation of heating.

China’s clean heating policies ‘may have prevented over 23,000 premature deaths’

Concentrations of hazardous PM2.5 particles fell by 41 per cent in Beijing and 27 other cities from 2015 to 2021 because of the winter clean heating plan, researchers say.

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[Hamartia Antidote]

China has centralised winter heating systems that are usually switched on from mid-November and switched off again in mid-March. T

..and this is hot water steam radiators? That people can't switch on outside the months specified since there simply won't be any heat available.

 

[beijingwalker]

..and this is hot water steam radiators? That people can't switch on outside the months specified since there simply won't be any heat available.

Air conditioners or electric heaters can be helpful if you feel cold before the central heating date, nowadays some new high tech heaters work really well and they are super cheap, some houses choose to use the electric heaters instead of central heating.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Air conditioners or electric heaters can be helpful if you feel cold before the central heating date, nowadays some new high tech heaters work really well and they are super cheap, some houses choose to use the electric heaters instead of central heating.

So it is hot water steam radiators...

 

[beijingwalker]

So it is hot water steam radiators...

Yes now for most central heating in China, some cities and provinces started to switch to electric and nuclear power heating such as Xinjiang and NE China.

 

[beijingwalker]

China’s decision to reduce coal-powered heating may have saved 23,000 lives​

BY LAURA BAISAS | PUBLISHED FEB 3, 2023 10:00 AM

Air pollution is linked to numerous health concerns, from asthma to an increase in the amount and severity of lung and heart disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) considers air pollution a public health issue and their data estimates that 99 percent of the world breathes air with harmful levels of pollutants.

Government regulations are a major tool in improving air quality. A study published February 1 in the journal Environmental Science & Technology finds that stricter clean heating policies put in place by China may have reduced 23,000 premature deaths in 2021 compared to 2015.

China has historically utilized a centralized winter heating strategy that provides free or heavily subsidized heating to cities from about mid-November to March. Biomass burning, or burning wood and other vegetation for warmth, iswas also often used for heating in rural areas. This combination of biomass and coal burning is often associated with haze during China’s winters.

In 2013, China introduced the Air Pollution Prevention and Control Action Plan which accelerated the use of a centralized heating district and encouraged a switch to cleaner fuels. Coal still accounted for 83 percent of total heating in 2016, but the Chinese central government issued its Clean Winter Heating Plan for Northern China the following year.

Between 2015 and 2021, Beijing, Tianjin, and 26 surrounding cities (known as the “2+26” cities) saw concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM2.5) reduced by 41.3 percent. Other northern Chinese that did not enact the same heating policy saw a 13 percent decrease. The team found that the premature deaths from poor air quality fell from 169,016 in 2015 to 145,460 in 2021.

“Our research demonstrates the effectiveness of China’s clean winter heating policies on reducing PM2.5 – with particular success for the stricter clean heating policies in ‘2 + 26’ cities, which also led to a reduced impact of heating emissions on sulfur dioxide (SO2),” said study co-author and atmospheric biogeochemist Zongbo Shi, from the University of Birmingham, in a statement. “These results demonstrate clear air quality benefits from the stricter clean heating policies in ‘2 + 26’ cities.”

According to the study, evaluating the effectiveness of clean heating policies is difficult due to complicated chemical and physical processes in the atmosphere and socioeconomic factors. The team from Nankai University in Tianjin and the University of Birmingham in England used a new method that combined machine learning and a synthetic control method, which evaluates an intervention’s effect.

“Using a novel approach combining machine learning with causal inference, we showed that heating in northern China was a major source of air pollution,” said Shi. “However, clean heating policies have caused the annual PM2.5 in mainland China to reduce significantly between 2015 and 2021, with significant public health benefits.”

Further decarbonizing measures will continue to help clean the air, according to the study.

“Clean heating policies in northern China not only reduced air pollution but also greenhouse gas emissions, contributing to China’s push for carbon neutrality. However, we found that heating remains an important source of air pollution in northern China, particularly in cities that are not part of the ‘2+26’ cluster,” said Robert Elliot, study co-author and applied economist from the University of Birmingham, in a statement. “Decarbonizing heating should remain a key part of China’s carbon neutrality strategy that not only reduces air pollution but also provide significant public health benefits.”

China still has a steep hill to climb to decarbonize as a whole. It aims to hit peak carbon emissions by 2030 and become carbon-neutral by 2060. While it is installing renewable energy rapidly, it still built 33 gigawatts of new coal plants in 2021 and hit a record-breaking 4.07 billion tonnes of coal output that same year.'

China's decision to reduce coal-powered heating may have saved 23,000 lives

Between 2015 and 2021, Beijing, Tianjin, and 26 surrounding cities saw concentrations of fine particulate matter reduced by 41.3 percent.

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