Assessment of air quality benefits from the national pollution control policy of thermal power plants in China: A numerical simulation

Wang, Zhanshan; Pan, Libo; Li, Yunting; Zhang, Dawei; Ma, Jin; Sun, Feng; Xu, Wenshuai; Wang, Xingrun

doi:10.1016/j.atmosenv.2015.01.022

Cited by 34 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 50 publications

(7 reference statements)

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“…CPED is a unit-level database including dynamic information on boiler size, operation conditions, air pollutant emissions and locations for individual electricity generating units. Most previous studies applied the same scaling factor to all CPPs to represent the effectiveness of emission control policies, which ignores the variations among plants [18,19]. The utilization of CPED for the first time allows for an estimate at the unit level for every time step and allocates the emission changes to exact locations.…”

Section: Methods and Data 21 Emission Reduction Estimatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Air quality and health benefits of China’s emission control policies on coal-fired power plants during 2005–2020

Liu

Tong

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Coal-fired power plants (CPPs) dominate China's energy supply systems. Over the past two decades, the explosive growth of CPPs has led to negative air quality and health impacts in China, and a series of control policies have been implemented to alleviate those impacts. In this work, by combining a CPPs emission database over China (CPED), a regional chemical transport model (WRF-CMAQ), and the integrated exposure-response model, we summarized historical and ongoing emission control policies on CPPs over China, investigated the air quality and health impacts of China's CPPs during 2005-2020, and quantified the benefits of each policy. We found that despite the 97.4% growth of coal-fired power generation during 2005-2015, PM 2.5 exposures caused by emissions from China's CPPs decreased from 9.0 μg m −3 in 2005 to 3.6 μg m −3 in 2015. The active emission control policies have decreased CPPs-induced PM 2.5 exposures by 10.0 μg m −3 during 2005-2015. We estimated that upgrading end-of-pipe control facilities and early retirement of small and low-efficiency units could respectively reduce PM 2.5 exposures by 7.9 and 2.1 μg m −3 during 2005-2015 and avoid 111 900 and 31 400 annual premature deaths. Since 2015, China's government has further required all CPPs to comply with the so-called 'ultra-low emission standards' before 2020 as a major component of China's clean air actions. If the policy is fully deployed, CPPs-induced PM 2.5 exposures could further decrease by 2.5 μg m −3 and avoid 43 500 premature deaths annually. Our study confirms the effectiveness of tailored control policies for China's CPPs and reveals that those policies have played important roles in air quality improvement in China.

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Section: Methods and Data 21 Emission Reduction Estimatesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The impact of emissions from CPPs on air quality and health in China has been investigated in previous work [1,2,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23]. Early studies (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Air quality and health benefits of China’s emission control policies on coal-fired power plants during 2005–2020

Liu

Tong

et al. 2019

Environ. Res. Lett.

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“…CC BY 4.0 License. Wang et al, 2015b). The power sector contributes significantly to air pollutants of the nitrogen oxides (NOx), the sulfur dioxide (SO 2 ), and the particulate mater (PM) (Zhao et al, 2013;Huang et al, 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of the Green Light Program on haze pollution in the North China Plain, China

Long

Tie

Zhou

et al. 2019

Preprint

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Abstract. As the world's largest developing country, China undergoes the ever-increasing demand for electricity during the past few decades. In 1996, China launched the Green Lights Program (GLP), which becomes a national energy conservation activity for saving lighting electricity, as well as an effective reduction of the coal consumption for power generation. Despite of the great success of the GLP, its effects on haze pollution have not been investigated and well understood. This study focused to assess the potential coal-saving induced by the GLP and to estimate the consequent improvements of the haze pollutions in the North China Plain (NCP), because severe haze pollutions often occur in the NCP and a large amount of power plants locate in this region. The estimated potential coal-saving induced by the GLP can reach a massive value of 120&#8211;323 million tons, accounting for 6.7&#8211;18.0&#8201;% of the total coal consumption for thermal power generation in China. In December 2015, there was a massive potential emission reduction of air pollutants from thermal power generation in the NCP, which was estimated to be 20.0&#8211;53.8&#8201;Gg for NOx and 6.9&#8211;18.7&#8201;Gg for SO2. The potential emission reductions induced by the GLP played important roles in the haze formation, because the NOx and SO2 are important precursors for the formation of particles. To assess the impact of the GLP on haze pollution, sensitive studies were conducted by applying a regional chemical/dynamical model (WRF-CHEM). The model results suggest that in the lower limit case of emission reduction, the PM2.5 concentration decreases by 2&#8211;5&#8201;&#181;g&#8201;m&#8722;3 in large areas of the NCP. In the upper limit case of emission reduction, there was much more remarkable decrease in PM2.5 concentration (4&#8211;10&#8201;&#181;g&#8201;m&#8722;3). This study is a good example to illustrate that scientific innovation can induce important benefits on environment issues, such as haze pollution.

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“…The MM5-CAMx model modeling system (Wang et al, 2015a) was applied in this study to simulate concentrations of PM 2.5 and chemical compositions of PM 2.5 during this pollution episode. The PAST module in CAMx was used to study the regional transport of PM 2.5 in the monitoring sites.…”

Section: Model Configurations and Evaluationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-Method Observation and Numerical Simulation of a PM2.5 Pollution Episode in Beijing in October, 2014

Wang

Zhang

et al. 2016

Aerosol Air Qual. Res.

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Multi-method observation and numerical simulation were applied to analyze a PM 2.5 pollution episode in Beijing in October, 2014. The results of vertical observation showed that surface-level backscatter signal and extinction coefficient increased during the episode, suggesting that air pollutants accumulated near the ground. The main meteorological factors during this episode could be described as calm wind, high relative humidity and low surface pressure. The evolution of PM 2.5 concentrations in this episode was divided into four stages, including two-steps type concentration climbing stages (P1 and P2), high concentration maintenance stage (P3) and rapid cleanup stage (P4). Analysis on ground-based observation, satellite remote sensing and atmospheric general circulation showed that regional transport, including crop residue burning, was the main incentive of this pollution episode. Subsequently, local pollutants emission and regional transport maintained and aggravated the episode under unfavorable meteorological conditions. Temporal variation of OX was in close agreement with that of PM 2.5 and the concentration peaks of OX occurred few hours before those of PM 2.5 , which indicated that strong atmospheric oxidation could promote the formation of secondary PM 2.5 . The results of numerical simulation showed that during 8-10 October, the average contribution of regional transport to PM 2.5 in the five sites exceeded 50%.

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Assessment of air quality benefits from the national pollution control policy of thermal power plants in China: A numerical simulation

Cited by 34 publications

References 50 publications

Air quality and health benefits of China’s emission control policies on coal-fired power plants during 2005–2020

Air quality and health benefits of China’s emission control policies on coal-fired power plants during 2005–2020

Impact of the Green Light Program on haze pollution in the North China Plain, China

Multi-Method Observation and Numerical Simulation of a PM2.5 Pollution Episode in Beijing in October, 2014

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