Integrated pollution and carbon mitigation delivers major health and economic co-benefits in China

Xiao, Y.-X., Wang, H., Liu, L.-J., Purohit, P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7265-6960, Jiang, H.-D., Zhu, L.-L., Zheng, H.-L., & Zhang, K. (2026). Integrated pollution and carbon mitigation delivers major health and economic co-benefits in China. npj Clean Air 2 e22. 10.1038/s44407-026-00062-9.

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Abstract

Synergistic mitigation of air pollutants and greenhouse gases is crucial for achieving clean air and carbon neutrality, but quantitative evidence of sectoral and regional health co-benefits in China remains limited. We develop an integrated Energy-Economy-Air Quality-Health framework coupling CEEPA, GAINS, and a province-level health module to simulate fourteen policy scenarios from 2020 to 2050. Coordinated strategies reduce CO 2 and pollutants (SO 2 , NO X , PM 2.5 ) by 75% relative to 2020, avoiding more than 500,000 premature deaths by 2050 and yielding monetized gains of 1.07 trillion CNY. Health benefits concentrate in industrially dense and populous provinces, with near-term PM 2.5 reductions driven by pollution control and long-term improvements reliant on decarbonization. The integrated approach achieves a benefit-to-cost ratio of 1.42, lowering abatement costs by 11% relative to pollution-only measures. Our findings highlight the value of coordinated, sector- and region-specific strategies for simultaneous climate mitigation, air quality improvement, and public health protection.

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