Abstract
Clean energy transition has been considered as an indispensable way to attain sustainable development for China, where the coal-to-gas initiative plays a vital role towards the goal. This paper takes Beijing, China’s political and economic center as well as a national pioneer in the energy transition, as a case to systematically analyze the co-mitigation of air pollution (PM2.5) and carbon emissions (CO2) achieved by the policy-driven natural gas-coal consumption substitution. Firstly, a qualitative analysis of the relationship of Beijing’s coal-to-gas policies and its air quality has been conducted. Then, VAR and ARDL models are employed to quantitatively analyze the impacts of coal-to-gas policies on PM2.5 and CO2, respectively. Results show that (i) an innovation of natural gas/coal consumption ratio will reduce PM2.5 concentrations, and the effect decreases over time; and (ii) an increase of 1% in natural gas/coal consumption ratio in Beijing will cause a decrease of 0.0784% in CO2 emissions in the long run. Therefore, the coal-to-gas policies do increase the usage of natural gas and improve Beijing’s air quality. The assessment methods and conclusions can be regarded as a reference for not only China’s policymakers, but also other countries, especially nowadays when air quality is becoming more valued and GHGs are being tightly controlled.
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Availability of data
The PM2.5 data analyzed during the current study are available in the Beijing Municipal Ecological and Environmental Monitoring Center repository, http://www.bjmemc.com.cn/. The CO2 dataset analyzed during the current study are available in the Beijing Municipal Ecological and Environmental Monitoring Center repository, http://www.bjmemc.com.cn/. The CO2 data analyzed during this study are included in this published article: Long-term historical trends in air pollutant emissions in Asia: Regional Emission inventory in ASia (REAS) version 3.1.
The daily consumption data that support the findings of this study are available from Beijing Gas Group Company Limited but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of Beijing Gas Group Company Limited.
Funding
The relevant researches carried out in this paper are supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No.71874201; 71871084; 71503264).
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Conceptualization: JLW. Data curation: JLW, ZHL, HKY, YDM, JXF. Methodology: ZHL, HKY. Formal analysis and investigation: JLW, ZHL, HKY. Writing—original draft preparation: ZHL, HKY, QL. Writing—review and editing: JLW, YDM. Visualization: ZHL, HKY. Funding acquisition: JLW. Supervision: JLW, YDM.
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Highlights
• Coal-to-gas policies in Beijing have been systematically reviewed and analyzed.
• The effect of policy implementation is analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively.
• Results show that coal-to-gas policies do improve Beijing’s air quality significantly.
• Impacts of policies on PM2.5 are significant in short term and stabilize in the long term.
• The dampening effect of policies on CO2 emissions is significant in the long run.
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Wang, J., Li, Z., Ye, H. et al. Do China’s coal-to-gas policies improve regional environmental quality? A case of Beijing. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 57667–57685 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14727-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-14727-3