Quantifying the health benefits of improving environmental efficiency: A case study from coal power plants in China

It is unclear whether improving the environmental efficiency (output per input) of coal power plants mitigate premature deaths due to air pollution. This study proposed an interdisciplinary framework based on a frontier method to quantify the health benefits of improving the environmental efficiency of power plants. A case study based on the input and output data of 316 coal power plants in China in 2010 was conducted to verify the functionality of the proposed framework. The main findings were as follows: (1) the environmental efficiency improvement of power plants can play an important role in mitigating health hazards caused by air pollutants; (2) the mitigation potential of premature deaths has spatial variations; and (3) the emission reduction potential of air pollutants is not correlated with the mitigation potential of premature death at the provincial level. These results highlight the importance of understanding the regional potential for health hazard mitigation as well as the crucial need to implement suitable policies for improving environmental efficiency.