Health Benefits and Costs of Clean Heating Renovation: An Integrated Assessment in a Major Chinese City

China has been promoting one of the world's largest campaigns for clean heating renovation since 2017. Here, we present an integrated cost-benefit analysis in a major prefecture-level city by combining a large-scale household energy survey and PM2.5 exposure measurement, high-resolution chemical transport simulation, and health impact assessment. We find that the completed renovation decreases the share of solid fuels in the heating energy mix from 96 to 6% and achieves a concomitant reduction of cooking solid-fuel use by 70%. The completed renovation decreases the ambient PM2.5 concentration in Linfen by 0.5-5 mu g m(-3) (2.4 mu g m(-3) on average) and decreases the integrated PM2.5 exposure by 4.2 (3.5-5.0) mu g m(-3). The renovation is estimated to avoid 162 (125-225) and 328 (254-457) premature deaths annually based on two health impact assessment methods. The ratios of monetized health benefits to cost are 1.51 (0.73-2.59) and 3.06 (1.49-5.23) based on the above two methods. The benefit-to-cost ratio is projected to remain high if the renovation is further expanded. More polluted and less wealthy households enjoy larger health benefits but also experience a higher expense increase, suggesting that a more carefully designed subsidy policy is needed to protect low-income households.

Automated summary

China has been implementing a large-scale clean heating renovation campaign since 2017, and an integrated cost-benefit analysis showed that the project significantly reduced the use of solid fuels, decreased PM2.5 concentrations, and resulted in health benefits outweighing costs.