12 DEC 2025 (FRI) 15:00-16:00

Departmental Research Seminars Series

Misaligned Carbon and Health Burdens Across China's Supply Chains: Source Attribution Informed Co-Mitigation

Date: 12 DEC 2025 (Friday)

Time: 15:00-16:00 (HKT)

Venue: CLL, Department of Geography, 10/F, The Jockey Club Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Registration link: https://hkuems1.hku.hk/hkuems/ec_hdetail.aspx?guest=Y&ueid=104276

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Abstract:

China faces the dual challenge of decarbonization and air quality improvement, yet effectively addressing both goals is complicated by divergent sectoral emission profiles and spatial disparities. This talk examines the challenges and opportunities for achieving climate–health co-benefits by integrating source-level attribution with supply-chain dynamics. By integrating adjoint emission sensitivity modeling with input-output analysis and spatially explicit health impact assessments, we quantify discrepancies between source contributions to carbon emissions and health burdens. Monetized PM2.5 health damage exceeds climate impacts in over half of the 53 analyzed subsectors. Furthermore, demand from economically advanced provinces induces two distinct shifting patterns between carbon and health burdens. Carbon emissions are outsourced to sparsely populated northwestern regions through power generation, whereas health burdens concentrate in the densely populated industrial manufacturing belt of central and northern China. Despite these production-side divergences, alignment at the final production and consumption level presents opportunities to narrow the energy intensity gap through supply-chain coordination. Integrating spatially explicit health costs into climate policy and leveraging supply-chain coordination can reconcile production-side disparities, offering actionable pathways for balanced climate–health co-mitigation during China's energy transition and industrial restructuring.

Professor Chen Yilin

Assistant Professor at the School of Urban Planning and Design, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School

Chen Yilin is Assistant Professor at the School of Urban Planning and Design, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School. Her research focuses on emission inventory development and employs advanced atmospheric modeling to quantify air quality and health impacts of emission sources, informing the development of integrated air quality and climate mitigation policy. Her recent projects examine opportunities to simultaneously reduce air pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions across China's interprovincial supply chains, and evaluate the resulting co-benefits for climate and public health.

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