Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013. ix, 433 pp. (Figures, tables.) US$50.00, cloth. ISBN 978-0-262-01988-0.
With China’s air pollution in the global spotlight, Clear Skies Over China: Reconciling Air Quality, Climate, and Economic Goals, edited by Chris P. Nielsen and Mun S. Ho, is an informative and timely volume. This book is a follow-up to the similarly structured edited volume Clearing the Air: The Health and Economic Damages of Air Pollution in China, published by the same editors in 2007 (Mun S. Ho and Chris P. Nielsen, Clearing the Air: The Health and Economic Damages of Air Pollution in China, MIT Press, 2007). The new book benefits from the linking of more advanced atmospheric research methods with economic and policy framing, facilitated by higher resolution emissions inventories, as well as a broader policy assessment. It also includes an expanded assessment of benefits to pollution mitigation beyond health to include agricultural productivity.
Part 1 begins with an overview of the atmospheric environment in China, including a review of the existing research, and a discussion of the methods used and the results from the models used to assess the costs and benefits of various emissions control policy options. In this section, the authors review two “past” scenarios, and two “future” scenarios. The “past” scenarios examine the impact of the actual technology mandates for sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions control that were part of the 11th Five-Year Plan, as well as a hypothetical economy-wide carbon tax again for the 2006–2010 timeframe. The “future” scenarios run from 2013–2020, spanning the 12th and 13th five-year plan periods, and include an assessment of 4 different future visions of carbon tax implementation.
Part 2 contains 6 different studies that lay out the underlying research that helped to inform the integrated modeling work reviewed in the earlier chapters. These chapters examine topics such as emissions from coal-fired power plants and cement production, emissions inventories and pollution concentrations, and the benefits of pollution reductions for human health and agriculture. Chapter 9, the final chapter of this section, provides a concluding, integrated approach to estimating the costs and benefits of air pollution control policies in order to assess how such policies would affect the broader economy.
Part 3 contains three appendices that provide a more technical overview of the assumptions on which the analysis in the earlier chapters is based. Appendix A details the economic-environmental model of China used to produce the results detailed in the book, including its structure, key variables and parameters, and the data sources used. Appendix B contains the methodology and reasoning behind the valuation of health damages as used in this book, including the mortality and morbidity valuation methodologies. Appendix C reviews the methodology used for emissions estimates for the 2007 model base year in the 2013–2020 policy cases, including a discussion of how some new assumptions were made that differ from the 2005 base year used in the 2006–2010 model.
There are several key contributions of this book that will be of particular interest to students and scholars of energy and environment in China. The book is very data rich, and the authors are careful to provide clear documentation of their varied data sources. The authors provide a nice overview of the limitations of official estimates of emissions in China, and piece together alternative studies to provide more comprehensive inventories than the national statistics provide. The clearly articulated discussion of how emissions estimates from independent researchers differ from those of official sources is very useful.
In addition, the modeling work on which most of the analysis in this volume is based is both intricate and innovative. As the authors discuss, the resolution of emissions inventories “had to advance significantly in both sector and spatial dimensions to link a multisector economic model with a spatial atmospheric one” (23). In addition, the authors explain the basic but often neglected distinction between how scientists measure pollution and how governments measure pollution. While scientists have to characterize sources of pollution more comprehensively in order to assess the effects of changes in emissions on actual atmospheric concentrations, policies tend to be pollutant specific. Since most pollutant species react chemically in the atmosphere, evaluating pollutant quantities in isolation may miss key interactions that affect concentrations.
A key conclusion of the book that will be of particular interest to scholars of environmental policy in China and perhaps surprising to many is that the pollution control policies implemented as part of China’s 11th Five-Year Plan, including the SO2 control policy and the small plant shut down policy, resulted in “a substantial improvement in air quality achieved at modest cost to GDP” (367). As a result, the authors note that while they may not have been the most efficient policies possible, they did provide a substantial net benefit. The authors note that this experience may be useful in the design of policies to control other types of pollutants including NOx and CO2, and suggest that China implement a carbon tax that would start low and gradually increase over time. Finally, the authors note that while reduced carbon dioxide emissions would result in global benefits, their results suggest that it is in China’s own national self-interest to price carbon to encourage energy transitions.
The main limitation of the book is that it is not written to be widely accessible to non-specialist readers. While the first three chapters do a much better job of speaking to a broader audience, chapters 4 through 9, as the editors note, are written primarily for other researchers with significant background in economic modeling, air pollution and China’s energy sector.
Nielsen and Ho’s edited volume is a significant contribution to the literature on air pollution control in China. It will be most useful for specialized scholars and students of atmospheric science, economic valuation, and environmental policy in China.
Joanna Lewis
Georgetown University, Washington DC, USA
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