Multi-year Evaluation of a Clean Heating Policy on Residents’ Air Pollution Exposures in Beijing, China

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

China’s Clean Heating Policy (CHP), aimed at shifting households from coal to electricity for space heating, represents a major residential energy transition initiative. We evaluated its multi-year impacts on outdoor, indoor, and personal exposures to PM 2.5 and black carbon (BC) across 50 villages and 1,236 households in rural Beijing. Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) design, we observed a substantial (31 μg/m 3 ) reduction in winter (3 month) indoor PM 2.5 (95% CI: −53, −9), but an increase in 24-h indoor BC by 2.6 (0.4, 4.7) μg/m 3 . CHP-driven reductions in personal exposures were limited, emphasizing the limitations of using single 24-h measurements to estimate “usual” exposure. Outdoor air quality improved in all villages, with no difference between treated versus untreated villages. Exposure-energy trade-off analysis showed that untreated households achieved similar personal PM 2.5 reductions at lower cost, with smaller coal use reductions and less electricity expenditures. The CHP significantly reduced seasonal indoor PM 2.5, but continued burning of biomass, which was accessible at no cost, limited air quality improvements and may have contributed to the observed increase in 24-h indoor BC. This illustrates how behavioral choices, economic feasibility, and selection of exposure metrics influence the measured impact of household energy transitions.