TY - JOUR
T1 - Potential Uses of Coal Methane in China and Associated Benefits for Air Quality, Health, and Climate
AU - Zhang, Mingyang
AU - Jordaan, Sarah M.
AU - Peng, Wei
AU - Zhang, Qiang
AU - Miller, Scot M.
N1 - Funding Information:
Funding for this work was provided by Johns Hopkins University and the Johns Hopkins Institute for Data Intensive Engineering and Science. Computing support was provided by the Maryland Advanced Research Computing Center.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 American Chemical Society.
PY - 2020/10/6
Y1 - 2020/10/6
N2 - China is the world's largest producer and consumer of coal, but the country has recently set ambitious targets for cleaner energy sources. These include goals to capture and utilize methane from coal seams as a source of unconventional natural gas. We investigate the impacts of using coal methane to displace coal power plants and residential coal combustion across northern China. We compare the greenhouse gas emissions, air quality, and public health impacts of several scenarios for coal methane utilization. We find that China's existing goals would decrease the country's total carbon emissions by ∼2.3% (284 million tons CO2eq). Furthermore, these reductions are dominated by mitigated methane emissions and therefore confer a much larger climate benefit than would be expected from other forms of natural gas. Our results also indicate that the air quality and health impacts strongly depend on how the methane is utilized. Using the methane to displace coal-fired electricity would reduce annual mean ambient PM2.5 concentrations by up to >2.5 μg/m3 and prevent up to 9290 premature mortalities annually (95% confidence interval: 7862-9992). By contrast, utilizing coal methane in home heating yields smaller changes to ambient air quality (∼0.6 μg/m3), but improvements to indoor air quality could produce comparable reductions in premature mortality.
AB - China is the world's largest producer and consumer of coal, but the country has recently set ambitious targets for cleaner energy sources. These include goals to capture and utilize methane from coal seams as a source of unconventional natural gas. We investigate the impacts of using coal methane to displace coal power plants and residential coal combustion across northern China. We compare the greenhouse gas emissions, air quality, and public health impacts of several scenarios for coal methane utilization. We find that China's existing goals would decrease the country's total carbon emissions by ∼2.3% (284 million tons CO2eq). Furthermore, these reductions are dominated by mitigated methane emissions and therefore confer a much larger climate benefit than would be expected from other forms of natural gas. Our results also indicate that the air quality and health impacts strongly depend on how the methane is utilized. Using the methane to displace coal-fired electricity would reduce annual mean ambient PM2.5 concentrations by up to >2.5 μg/m3 and prevent up to 9290 premature mortalities annually (95% confidence interval: 7862-9992). By contrast, utilizing coal methane in home heating yields smaller changes to ambient air quality (∼0.6 μg/m3), but improvements to indoor air quality could produce comparable reductions in premature mortality.
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U2 - 10.1021/acs.est.0c01207
DO - 10.1021/acs.est.0c01207
M3 - Article
C2 - 32845142
AN - SCOPUS:85092681777
VL - 54
SP - 12447
EP - 12455
JO - Environmental Science & Technology
JF - Environmental Science & Technology
SN - 0013-936X
IS - 19
ER -