Shihui Zhang

Tsinghua University | TH · Department of Earth System Science

Background The announcement of China's 2060 carbon neutrality goal has drawn the world's attention to the specific technology pathway needed to achieve this pledge. We aimed to evaluate the health co-benefits of carbon neutrality under different technology pathways, which could help China to achieve the carbon neutrality goal, air quality goal, and...

This paper argues for an efficient pollution tax rate system that reflects the differentiation of marginal health damages of the individual emission sources. Although China is the first country in the world to launch a regionally differentiated pollution tax rate program, due to the absence of marginal damage estimation, whether this policy is effi...

Climate change significantly impacts human health, exacerbating existing health inequalities and creating new ones. This study addresses the lack of systematic review in this area by analyzing 2440 publications, focusing on four key terms: health, disparities, environmental factors, and climate change. Strict inclusion criteria limited the selectio...

With growing health risks from climate change and a trend of increasing carbon emissions from coal, it is time for China to take action. The rising frequency and severity of extreme weather events in China, such as record-high temperatures, low rainfall, severe droughts, and floods in many regions (along with the compound and ripple effects of thes...

Cities play a fundamental role in policy decision-making processes, necessitating the availability of city-level population projections to better understand future population dynamics and facilitate research across various domains, including urban planning, shrinking cities, GHG emission projections, GDP projections, disaster risk mitigation, and p...

Leveraging climate actions for healthy ageingWenjia Cai1†, Chi Zhang2†, Shihui Zhang1†, Yuqi Bai1, Max Callaghan3, Nan Chang4, Bin Chen5,Huiqi Chen6, Liangliang Cheng6, Xueqin Cui1, Hancheng Dai7, Bawuerjiang Danna8,Wenxuan Dong9,10, Weicheng Fan9,10, Xiaoyi Fang11, Tong Gao12, Yang Geng13, Dabo Guan1,Yixin Hu14, Junyi Hua15, Cunrui Huang16, Hong H...

Assessing biomass resource potential is essential for China’s ambitious goals of carbon neutrality, rural revitalization, and poverty eradication. To fill the data gap of high spatial resolution biomass resources in China, this study estimates the biomass resource potential for all types of lignocellulosic biomass feedstock at 1 km resolution in 20...

Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models have been widely employed in economic, social, and environmental impact assessments for low-carbon policies. As net-zero transition has become a global trend, it is crucial to conduct a systematic review of how CGE models serve low-carbon policies. This review examined 1002 studies published between 2001...

Incorporating health cobenefits from coabated air pollution into carbon mitigation policy making is particularly important for developing countries to boost policy efficiency. For sectors that highly depend on electrification for decarbonization, it remains unclear how the increased electricity demand and consequent health impacts from sectoral mit...

Although widely recognized as the key to climate goals, coal "phase down" has long been argued for its side effects on energy security and social development. Retrofitting coal power units with biomass and coal co-firing with a carbon capture and storage approach provides an alternative way to avoid these side effects and make deep carbon dioxide e...

The 2022 report of the Lancet Countdown is published as the world confronts profound and concurrent systemic shocks. Countries and health systems continue to contend with the health, social, and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, while Russia's invasion of Ukraine and a persistent fossil fuel overdependence has pushed the world into global...

A health-friendly, climate resilient, and carbon-neutral pathway would deliver major benefits to people's health and wellbeing in China, especially for older populations, while simultaneously promoting high-quality development in the long run. This report is the third China Lancet Countdown report, led by the Lancet Countdown Regional Centre based...

Since China's announcement of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2015, much focus has been drawn on the environmental impacts of China's energy investments in the countries along the BRI. The economic and social impacts of these investments, which are also important for the wellbeing for local people, left largely uninvestigated. In this paper,...

Policy on household carbon reduction behavior has an important role on climate actions but is neglected in practice. Household energy consumption is uncontrolled under the current policy both in the developed and developing countries, which is inefficient towards an ambitious climate target. Household participation in emission trading scheme (ETS)...

China’s coal-fired power industry urgently needs deep decarbonization to meet the challenge of climate change. Regional air quality improvement and the health benefits can motivate efforts to achieve low-carbon goals. However, the health cobenefit per amount of carbon reduction may vary drastically across power plant units. The strategy of targetin...

An energy supply dominated by the use of fossil fuels causes both climate change and air pollution, which have negative impacts on human capital via both health and productivity. In addition, different people are affected differently because of factors such as age, gender and education level. To enhance the understanding of the benefits of low carb...

As China started to collect environmental tax on pollutant emitters, local governments were given autonomy to set tax rates that reflects regional differences to increase the policy efficiency. Previous studies have argued for efficient environmental regulations that equate the marginal damage of pollution to marginal abatement costs across space....

The potential of shale gas development in China is huge but research that assesses the impacts of shale gas development on China's economy and carbon emissions are rare. This paper used a dynamic CGE model with energy and carbon emission modules to evaluate the impacts under different scenarios. The results implied that large scale of shale gas dev...