Identification

Title

Impact of the Green Light Program on haze in the North China Plain, China

Abstract

As the world's largest developing country, China has undergone ever-increasing demand for electricity during the past few decades. In 1996, China launched the Green Light Program (GLP), which became a national energy conservation activity for saving lighting electricity as well as an effective reduction of the coal consumption for power generation. Despite the great success of the GLP, its effects on haze have not been investigated and well understood. This study focused on assessing the potential coal saving induced by the improvement of luminous efficacy, the core of the GLP, and on estimating the consequent effects on the haze in the North China Plain (NCP), where a large number of power plants are located and are often engulfed by severe haze. The estimated potential coal saving induced by the GLP can reach a massive value of 120-323 million tons, accounting for 6.7 %-18.0 % of the total coal consumption for thermal power generation in China. There was a massive potential emission reduction of air pollutants from thermal power generation in the NCP, which was estimated to be 20.0-53.8 Gg for NOx and 6.9-18.7 Gg for SO2 in December 2015. The potential emission reduction induced by the GLP plays important roles in the haze formation, because the NOx and SO2 are important precursors for the formation of particles. To assess the impact of the GLP on haze, sensitivity studies were conducted by applying a regional chemical-dynamical model (WRF-CHEM). The model results suggest that in the case of lower-limit emission reduction, the PM2.5 concentration decreased by 2-5 mu g m(-3) in large areas of the NCP. In the case of upper-limit emission reduction, there was much more remarkable decrease in PM2.5 concentration (4-10 mu g m(-3)). This study is a good example to illustrate that scientific innovation can induce important benefits for environment issues such as haze.

Resource type

document

Resource locator

Unique resource identifier

code

http://n2t.net/ark:/85065/d7cc13tq

codeSpace

Dataset language

eng

Spatial reference system

code identifying the spatial reference system

Classification of spatial data and services

Topic category

geoscientificInformation

Keywords

Keyword set

keyword value

Text

originating controlled vocabulary

title

Resource Type

reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2016-01-01T00:00:00Z

Geographic location

West bounding longitude

East bounding longitude

North bounding latitude

South bounding latitude

Temporal reference

Temporal extent

Begin position

End position

Dataset reference date

date type

publication

effective date

2019-09-04T00:00:00Z

Frequency of update

Quality and validity

Lineage

Conformity

Data format

name of format

version of format

Constraints related to access and use

Constraint set

Use constraints

Limitations on public access

None

Responsible organisations

Responsible party

contact position

OpenSky Support

organisation name

UCAR/NCAR - Library

full postal address

PO Box 3000

Boulder

80307-3000

email address

opensky@ucar.edu

web address

http://opensky.ucar.edu/

name: homepage

responsible party role

pointOfContact

Metadata on metadata

Metadata point of contact