International Experiences with Quantifying the Co-Benefits of Energy-Efficiency and Greenhouse-Gas Mitigation Programs and Policies

Abstract

Executive SummaryImproving the efficiency of energy production and consumption and switching to lower carbon energy sources can significantly decrease carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions and reduce climate change impacts. A growing body of research has found that these measures can also directly mitigate many non-climate change related human health hazards and environmental damage. Positive impacts of policies and programs that occur in addition to the intended primary policy goal are called co-benefits. Policy analysis relies on forecasting and comparing the costs of policy and program implementation and the benefits that accrue to society from implementation. GHG reduction and energy efficiency policies and programs face political resistance in part because of the difficulty of quantifying their benefits. On the one hand, climate change mitigation policy benefits are often global, long-term, and subject to large uncertainties, and subsidized energy pricing can reduce the direct monetary benefits of energy efficiency policies to below their cost. On the other hand, the co-benefits that accrue from these efforts' resultant reductions in conventional air pollution (such as improved health, agricultural productivity, reduced damage to infrastructure, and local ecosystem improvements) are generally near term, local, and more certain than climate change mitigation benefits and larger than the monetary value of energy savings. The incorporation of co-benefits into energy efficiency and climate mitigation policy and program analysis therefore might significantly increase the uptake of these policies. Faster policy uptake is especially important in developing countries because ongoing development efforts that do not consider co-benefits may lock in suboptimal technologies and infrastructure and result in high costs in future years.Over the past two decades, studies have repeatedly documented that non-climate change related benefits of energy efficiency and fuel conversion efforts, as a part of GHG mitigation strategies, can be from between 30% to over 100% of the costs of such policies and programs strategies. Policy makers around the world are increasingly interested in including both GHG and non-GHG impacts in analyses of energy efficiency and fuel switching policies and programs and a set of methodologies has matured from the efforts of early moving jurisdictions such as the European Union, the United States, and Japan.ii ES.1. General Steps for Quantifying Co-benefitsThere are four general steps for quantifying the co-benefits of energy efficiency and GHG emissions reduction policies discussed in this report:1. Calculating emissions differences between base case and alternative policy scenarios.2. Applying air dispersion modeling or simplifications to characterize and compare concentrations of pollutants.3. Estimating impacts for each scenario and comparing them against each other (using, for example, population-adjusted C-R functions to find health impacts).4. Monetizing or otherwise quantifying those impacts in rela...

Impacts of carbon trading scheme on air pollutant emissions in Guangdong Province of China

“…Several previous studies have already analyzed the implications of climate and energy saving policies on air pollutants in developed and developing countries (e.g. Hasanbeigi et al, 2013;Williams et al, 2012;Bollen et al, 2009). A range of studies have focused on the co-benefits of carbon mitigation measures induced air pollutant reduction in China (Aunan et al, 2004;Jiang et al, 2013;Dong et al, 2015), co-benefits of energy saving entail reductions in air pollution and the improvement of public health (Chen et al, 2007), environmental benefits of various vehicles by employing a case study in Shenyang, China (Geng et al, 2013), and co-benefits of energy and carbon mitigation policies on air pollutant reduction (Mao et al, 2012;Xi et al, 2013;He et al, 2010).…”

Quantifying the Co-benefits of Energy-Efficiency Programs: A Case Study of the Cement Industry in Shandong Province, China

“…As is also highlighted in Williams et al (2012), co-benefit studies are critical and becoming more common in developing countries such as China. However, data limitations combined with a lack of resources and experience with large-scale CGE or bottom-up models and sophisticated air quality models may present significant barriers.…”

“…benefits of emissions reductions in many international studies and some Chinese studies (Aunan et al 2004, Chen et al 2007, Kan and Chen 2004, Williams et al 2012). These functions are based on epidemiological research that statistically correlates health outcomes in large groups of people in geographically limited areas to the level of air pollutants to which the population has been exposed.…”

“…However, it is questionable whether adequate GIS data are available, and significant resources would be necessary to conduct such an analysis with CMAQ. Thus, a screening level tool, such as AERSCREEN which requires fewer data and computational resources, combined with a sensitivity analysis of the most influential input parameters, may be sufficient to characterize air concentrations for the purpose of this research and similar studies in the future which is to inform policy makers about the large co-benefits of the energy efficiency and/or GHG emissions reduction programs and policies (Williams et al 2012). …”

“…For a review of previous research on quantifying the co-benefits of energy-efficiency programs, we refer you to Williams et al (2012), which contains the results of a literature review performed at the outset of the current study.…”