The Impact of Coordinated Policies on Air Pollution Emissions from Road Transportation in China

Improving air quality across mainland China is an urgent policy challenge. While much of the problem is linked to China's broader reliance on coal and other fossil fuels across the energy system, road transportation is an important and growing source of air pollution. Here the authors use an energy-economic model, embedded in the broader Regional Emissions Air Quality Climate and Health (REACH) modeling framework, to analyze the impacts of implementing vehicle emissions together with a broader economy-wide climate policy on total air pollution and its spatial distribution. The authors find that full and immediate implementation of existing vehicle emissions standards at a China 3/III level or higher will significantly reduce the contribution of transportation to degraded air quality by 2020. The authors further show that transportation emissions standards function as an important complement to an economy-wide price on CO₂, which delivers significant co-benefits for air pollution reduction that are concentrated primarily in non-transportation sectors. Going forward, vehicle emissions standards and an economy-wide carbon price form a highly effective coordinated policy package that support China's air quality and climate change mitigation goals.

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• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee ADC70 Standing Committee on Transportation Energy.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Kishimoto, Paul Natsuo
  • Karplus, Valerie J
  • Zhong, Min
  • Saikawa, Eri
  • Zhang, Xu
  • Zhang, Xiliang
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 95th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2016-1-10 to 2016-1-14
• Date: 2016

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Maps; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 20p
• Monograph Title: TRB 95th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Environmental protection; Highway transportation; Policy; Pollutants
• Geographic Terms: China
• Subject Areas: Energy; Environment; Highways;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01592907
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 16-6233
• Files: PRP, TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 7 2016 10:46AM