The rural energy transition is critical in China’s efforts to achieve carbon neutrality and improve air quality. However, the costs and health benefits associated with the transition to carbon neutrality remain unclear. Here we explore the cost-effective transition pathways and air quality-related health impacts using an integrated energy-air quality-health modeling framework. We find that decarbonizing rural cooking and heating would triple contemporary energy consumption from 2014 to 2060, considerably reducing energy poverty nationwide. By 2060, electric cooking ranges and air-to-air heat pumps should be widely integrated, costing an additional 13 billion USD nationally in transformation costs, with ~40% concentrated in Shandong, Heilongjiang, Shanxi and Hebei provinces. Rural residential decarbonization would remarkably improve air quality in northern China, yielding substantial health co-benefits. Notably, monetized health benefits in most provinces are projected to offset transformation costs, except for certain relatively lower-development southwestern provinces, implying more financial support for rural residents in these areas will be needed.

Climate change mitigation efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have associated costs, but there are also potential benefits from improved air quality, such as public health improvements and the associated cost savings. A multidisciplinary modeling approach can better assess the co-benefits from climate mitigation for human health and provide a justifiable basis for establishment of adequate climate change mitigation policies and public health actions. An integrated research framework was adopted by combining a computable general equilibrium model, an air quality model, and a health impact assessment model, to explore the long-term economic impacts of climate change mitigation in South Korea through 2050. Mitigation costs were further compared with health-related economic benefits under different socioeconomic and climate change mitigation scenarios. Achieving ambitious targets (i.e., stabilization of the radiative forcing level at 3.4 W/m2) would cost 1.3-8.5 billion USD in 2050, depending on varying carbon prices from different integrated assessment models. By contrast, achieving these same targets would reduce costs by 23 billion USD from the valuation of avoided premature mortality, 0.14 billion USD from health expenditures, and 0.38 billion USD from reduced lost work hours, demonstrating that health benefits alone noticeably offset the costs of cutting GHG emissions in South Korea.

China is implementing intensive policies on electric vehicles to control air pollution in urban regions, especially the Beijing–Tianjin–Hebei (BTH) region, one of the most polluted areas in China. The development of electric vehicles will lead to an increase in electricity demand. Because electricity is mostly generated by thermal power in China, primary energy consumption will also increase. This study sets two scenarios: with the electric vehicle policies scenario (REN) and without the electric vehicle policies scenario (FOS) to compare electric vehicle policy’s impact. We quantified the health benefits of the electric vehicle policies in the BTH region by using an integrated assessment framework. Compared with scenario FOS, the local PM_2.5 emission will reduce by 11.38%, 15.12%, 22.27%, and the concentration will reduce by 18.84%, 20.04%, and 19.57% in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei separately by 2030 in REN. The electric vehicle policies can avoid 23.5 million morbidities and 4.6 thousand mortalities and save CNY 20.65 billion using the value of statistical life and 1.5 million work loss days in 2030 in REN. Our results show that electric vehicle policy can bring a remarkably positive benefit to public health and the economy.