Study Of Natural Gas Development And Evaluation Of Health Benefits In China

In recent years,China has vigorously promoted energy structure reform,promoted natural gas to replace coal,and gradually improved air quality,bringing environmental health benefits.However,the cost-benefit analysis in the process of policy-making often neglects the environmental health benefits,resulting in the loss of social welfare.This paper analyzes the development status and prospects of China’s natural gas from the aspects of supply and demand,and mainly studies the environmental health benefits of China’s natural gas development,intending to put forward reasonable suggestions for policy-making.Based on the impact pathway analysis framework,this paper conducts an economic evaluation of the environmental health impacts of natural gas development,including four steps: pollutant emissions,air quality impact,health end point,and monetization accounting.The results show that the development of clean energy can bring huge health benefits.This paper studies the environmental health benefits of China’s natural gas development at the national and regional levels.At the national level,this paper studies the health benefits brought about by the promotion of clean energy,and takes the energy structure adjustment of the residential sector as an example to calculate the health benefits of each province.At the regional level,this paper assesses the health losses caused by air pollution in Beijing,and takes the coal-to-gas policy in Changping District of Beijing as an example to study the health benefits of natural gas development.Results show that at national level,clean energy development is expected to reduce premature deaths by about 110,000 in 2030.The number of premature deaths due to air pollution in residential sector will be reduced by 14424,and the economic loss was reduced by 14.1 billion RMB.The provinces have different health benefits.At the regional level,the monetary value of Beijing’s economic losses in 2015 was 53.5 billion RMB,which dropped to 38.2 billion RMB in 2017.The contribution rate of Changping District’s coal-to-gas policy to reducing the health impact of local air pollution is 0.03%～0.45%.