DOES CLEAN HEATING IMPROVE AIR QUALITY? EVIDENCE FROM CHINESE CITIES

摘要

Air pollution in China brings economic and health issues across the country. The coal-based heating supply in China leads to substantial increase in pollution concentrations and pollution days in winter. To improve the air quality, Ministry of Ecology and Environment of China proposed to implement clean heating in “2+26” pilot cities of Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei by replacing coal by electricity or gas in 2016. The central government provides financial subsidies of different amounts for 12 cities in 2017. At present, its implementation is still under the experimental stage, but it is possible and necessary to evaluate the effects of clean heating. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of clean heating and its financial subsidies on air quality by difference-in-difference method and also analyzed the role of clean coal consumption or gas consumption on the air pollutants reduction.