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Air quality–carbon–water synergies and trade-offs in China’s natural gas industry

Nature Sustainability volume 1, pages 505–511 (2018)Cite this article

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Abstract

Both energy production and consumption can simultaneously affect regional air quality, local water stress and the global climate. Identifying the air quality–carbon–water interactions due to both energy sources and end-uses is important for capturing potential co-benefits while avoiding unintended consequences when designing sustainable energy transition pathways. Here, we examine the air quality–carbon–water interdependencies of China’s six major natural gas sources and three end-use gas-for-coal substitution strategies in 2020. We find that replacing coal with gas sources other than coal-based synthetic natural gas (SNG) generally offers national air quality–carbon–water co-benefits. However, SNG achieves air quality benefits while increasing carbon emissions and water demand, particularly in regions that already suffer from high per capita carbon emissions and severe water scarcity. Depending on end-uses, non-SNG gas-for-coal substitution results in enormous variations in air quality, carbon and water improvements, with notable air quality–carbon synergies but air quality–water trade-offs. This indicates that more attention is needed to determine in which end-uses natural gas should be deployed to achieve the desired environmental improvements. Assessing air quality–carbon–water impacts across local, regional and global administrative levels is crucial for designing and balancing the co-benefits of sustainable energy development and deployment policies at all scales.

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Fig. 1: Gas production and target (potential consumption) regions for mainland China’s six major natural gas sources based on government and industrial plans for 202011,18,23,27,40.
Fig. 2: Air quality-focused substitution (AS).
Fig. 3: Air quality-focused substitution (AS).
Fig. 4: Comparison of net changes in air quality (China’s population-weighted PM2.5 surface concentrations), carbon (life cycle GHG emissions under GWP20, assuming mean methane leakage rates) and water impacts (China’s weighted water consumption) from substituting 30 bcm of gas from various sources for coal under three deployment strategies in 2020.

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Data availability

Data used to perform this study can be found in the Supplementary Information. Any further data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

Y.Q. thanks the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University for her graduate fellowship and the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) for her 2016 Young Scientists Summer Program fellowship. E.B. thanks IIASA for his Postdoctoral Fellowship funding. Y.Q. acknowledges earlier discussions with G. Kiesewetter, Z. Klimont, J. Cofala and P. Rafaj.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Yue Qin

    Present address: Department of Earth System Science, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA

  2. Wei Peng

    Present address: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School of Government, Cambridge, MA, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Yue Qin, Wei Peng & Denise L. Mauzerall

  2. International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Laxenburg, Austria

    Lena Höglund-Isaksson, Edward Byers & Fabian Wagner

  3. Department of Geographical Sciences, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Kuishuang Feng

  4. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA

    Denise L. Mauzerall

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Contributions

Y.Q. and D.L.M. designed the study, Y.Q. performed the research, L.H.-I., E.B., K.F., F.W. and W.P. contributed data for analysis, Y.Q., L.H.-I., E.B., K.F., and D.L.M. analysed data and Y.Q., D.L.M. and L.H.-I. wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Yue Qin or Denise L. Mauzerall.

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Supplementary Information

Supplementary Methods, Supplementary Tables 1–9, Supplementary Figures 1–10, Supplementary References 1–53

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Qin, Y., Höglund-Isaksson, L., Byers, E. et al. Air quality–carbon–water synergies and trade-offs in China’s natural gas industry. Nat Sustain 1, 505–511 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-018-0136-7

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