Welfare loss of China's air pollution: How to make personal vehicle transportation policy
1. Full citation and abstract?
Citation: Su-Mei CHEN and Ling-Yun HE, Welfare loss of China's air pollution: How to make personal vehicle transportation policy, (College of Economics and Management, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China), ScienceDirect, 2014
Abstract: The article based on the first study of understanding socio-economic costs of air pollution and policies to provide useful suggestions for policy makers. The result of study indicates that the total substitution of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) for the existing personal internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) would be more beneficial to national air quality and human health than the combination of stringent fuel economy and emission standards for ICEVs, even in the Chinese case of coal heavy electric grids.
2. Where do the authors work, and what are their areas of expertise? Note any other publications by the authors with relevance to the 6Cities project.
Ling-Yun Heis the PhD of Quantitative Social Research, Marketing, and Behavioral Economics in China Agriculture University.
Shu-Peng Chen, Ling-Yun He, Bubble Formation and Heterogeneity of Traders: A Multi-Agent Perspective, Accepted: 12 November 2012 / Published online: 27 November 2012, Springer Science+Business Media New York 2012.
Ling-Yun He, Shu-Peng Chen, Nonlinear bivariate dependency of price–volume relationships in agricultural commodity futures markets: A perspective from Multifractal Detrended Cross-Correlation Analysis, Center for Futures and Financial Derivatives, College of Economics and Management, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100083, China.
3. What are the main findings or arguments presented in the article or report? The article assesses the socio-economic costs of China's air pollution (PM2.5, O3 and PM10–2.5), and then the potential impacts of personal vehicle transportation policies, using an integrated assessment framework based on a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. Results and some important policy implications are summarized as follows.
It is necessary for the Chinese policymakers to urgently address anthropogenic air pollution, particularly PM2.5 pollution, which has staggeringly damaged human health, the economy and residential welfare. In the case of 2007, due to the excess emissions of PM2.5, O3 and PM10–2.5 pollutants, China experienced a staggering GDP loss of about RMB361.468 billion Yuan and a welfare loss of about RMB227.649 billion. In a transitional economy, this timely valuation is to help both the residents and the government to voice more concerns about the sustainability of China's rapid economic growth than before.
Financial supports to personal plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are important in the current state of China. Scenario simulations show that the total substitution of PHEVs for China's existing personal internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) will improve air quality, human health and thus well-being, even in the current case of coal-heavy electric grids. This provides evidence for the positive environmental potential of PHEVs in China. However, such an environmental improvement might come with a sizable real GDP loss, which does not imply that there is no need of personal PHEVs. As Beirne, Beulen, Liu, and Mirzaei (2013) point out, to minimize the negative externalities created by China's excessive growth, one policy focus should be on how to slow down the pace of economic growth to a sustainable level. In addition, welfare gains from Policy 1 are relatively small compared with Policy 2, mainly due to high ownership cost of personal PHEVs. Accordingly, the country is still expected to offer financial supports to commercialize personal PHEVs.
It is also essential for policy interventions to tighten fuel economy standards (FES) and emission standards for personal ICEVs. Our findings show that air quality, health outcomes and residential welfare tend to benefit from tighter FES and emission standards for personal ICEVs. It is not to deny but to confirm the necessity of stricter FES and emission standards.
4. Describe at least three ways that the argument is supported.
Their arguments are supported by listing the formula used in the research.They estimate annual anthropogenic emissions with a source-specific emission inventory for China. In this methodology, emissions are categorized by fuel type (coal, fuel oil, and natural gas), and economic sector (residents, electric power, industry, commerce & institution, agriculture, and transportation). Thus, the resulting air pollutant emissions are estimated by the following equation:
Where E refers to anthropogenic emissions, A the activity rate in the form of fuel consumption, and F the net emission factor; m and n refer to the fuel type and economic sector, respectively.
If the data from research doesn’t support the report efficiently, they will use the figure or data from related documents. For example, they are dealing with premature deaths from chronic exposures to PM2.5 and PM10–2.5 pollutants as a function of age. Deaths from heart and lung diseases, which are the majority of premature deaths caused by chronic exposure to an excess particulate matter. They use the figure from Ministry of Health of P.R. China (2008).
The data listed in the article are also from various references.
5. What three (or more) quotes capture the message of the article or report?
“This paper focuses heavily on the PM2.5 issue. As the environmental damages accumulate and public awareness of environmental values rises with per capita income, China has continuously been criticized for promoting economic growth at the expense of natural environment. In this light, China has reached a crossroad, and it is a difficult but vitally important task for China to balance economic growth and environmental protection.”
“These numerical estimations as crucial inputs to policy-making indicate that air pollution, particularly PM2.5 pollution, has caused enough serious health damages to hinder the sustainable development of China if no action has taken to mitigate its emissions. However, it is not enough to satisfy the needs of policy-makers. It is necessary to further investigate how to facilitate sustainable development through policy design of personal vehicle transportation.”
“We investigate the impacts of alternative personal vehicle transportation policies. In terms of gross benefits, the results indicate that the total substitution of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) for the existing personal internal combustion engine vehicles (ICEVs) would be more beneficial to national air quality and human health than the combination of stringent fuel economy and emission standards for ICEVs, even in the Chinese case of coal heavy electric grids.”
6. What were the methods, tools and/or data used to produce the claims or arguments made in the article or report?
For the analysis, they build an integrated assessment framework based on a CGE model to address China's air pollution issue. They also adopt three key air pollutants, i.e., O3, PM2.5, and PM10–2.5. This framework accommodates pollution-generated health costs in a feedback, which in turn affect the economy from a general equilibrium perspective. They apply a similar approach to estimate the economic burden of air pollution. Briefly, a benchmark simulation is first developed to replicate the observed economic performance which has already been distorted by health damages associated with the actual level of air pollution; then they estimate what economic performance would have been without any anthropogenic sources of pollutant emissions; finally, by comparing the economic results from these two scenarios, they will capture the socio-economic costs of air pollution.
The integrated assessment framework that they use is briefly described in the following figure.
When a static CGE model of the Chinese economy is built, it will capable of capturing key economic and resource allocation implications of air pollution-induced health damages. To calculate the high-resolution pollutant emissions stemming from energy consumptions, we develop the source-specific Chinese emission inventory, which is directly linked to the CGE model.
7. How (if at all) are health disparities or other equity issues addressed in the article or report?
The article addressed the health issue of China, but rarely mentioned the health disparities. They find China's air pollution to be a staggering threat to human health, economy and residential welfare.
8. Where has this article or report been referenced or discussed? (In some journals, you can see this in a sidebar.)
The article history:
Received 25 November 2013
Received in revised form 7 August 2014
Accepted 8 August 2014
Available online 28 August 2014
It doesn’t have any history of being referenced or discussed in other documents.
9. Can you learn anything from the article or report’s bibliography that tells us something about how the article or report was produced?
The references shows that the article based on the data from other environmental or sustainability researches. The official documents like yearbook released from government also involved. This gives us a clue that the article discusses the policies or makes suggestions to the policy makers.
10. What three points, details or references from the text did you follow up on to advance your understanding of how air pollution science has been produced and used in governance and education in different settings?
PM2.5: China's PM2.5 level presented to be much higher than the standard from the World Health Organization Air Quality Guideline. The policies to abate this situation is urgent. Meanwhile, we need to improve the public awareness of environmental protection.
Relation between economic growth and environment protection: Economic growth is believed to help abate environmental destruction, so developing countries make extensive use of the environment for the purpose of economic growth. In fact, it is the very idea that led to an extensive growth of the Chinese economy for the past three decades, coupled with increasing environmental degradation.That is to say, as China tries to transform itself into a coordinating society (‘He Xie She Hui’ in Chinese), it is meaningful for the government to take measures to reduce environmental pollution.
The major source of air pollution: personal vehicle is one of the major anthropogenic emission sources. The fleet of the personal vehicles in China kept increasing rapidly along with the fast growing Chinese economy in 2000–2011. If no action is taken to mitigate air pollution, what socio-economic costs can result from anthropogenic air pollution? Then, how could such key variables as air quality, human health, GDP, and residential welfare move through alternative policy designs of personal vehicle transportation?
1. Full citation and abstract?
2. Where do the authors work, and what are their areas of expertise? Note any other publications by the authors with relevance to the 6Cities project.
3. What are the main findings or arguments presented in the article or report?
The article assesses the socio-economic costs of China's air pollution (PM2.5, O3 and PM10–2.5), and then the potential impacts of personal vehicle transportation policies, using an integrated assessment framework based on a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model. Results and some important policy implications are summarized as follows.
4. Describe at least three ways that the argument is supported.
Where E refers to anthropogenic emissions, A the activity rate in the form of fuel consumption, and F the net emission factor; m and n refer to the fuel type and economic sector, respectively.
5. What three (or more) quotes capture the message of the article or report?
6. What were the methods, tools and/or data used to produce the claims or arguments made in the article or report?
When a static CGE model of the Chinese economy is built, it will capable of capturing key economic and resource allocation implications of air pollution-induced health damages. To calculate the high-resolution pollutant emissions stemming from energy consumptions, we develop the source-specific Chinese emission inventory, which is directly linked to the CGE model.
7. How (if at all) are health disparities or other equity issues addressed in the article or report?
The article addressed the health issue of China, but rarely mentioned the health disparities. They find China's air pollution to be a staggering threat to human health, economy and residential welfare.
8. Where has this article or report been referenced or discussed? (In some journals, you can see this in a sidebar.)
The article history:
Received 25 November 2013
Received in revised form 7 August 2014
Accepted 8 August 2014
Available online 28 August 2014
It doesn’t have any history of being referenced or discussed in other documents.
9. Can you learn anything from the article or report’s bibliography that tells us something about how the article or report was produced?
The references shows that the article based on the data from other environmental or sustainability researches. The official documents like yearbook released from government also involved. This gives us a clue that the article discusses the policies or makes suggestions to the policy makers.
10. What three points, details or references from the text did you follow up on to advance your understanding of how air pollution science has been produced and used in governance and education in different settings?