TY - JOUR
T1 - Building-related health impacts in European and Chinese cities
T2 - a scalable assessment method
AU - Tuomisto, Jouni T.
AU - Niittynen, Marjo
AU - Pärjälä, Erkki
AU - Asikainen, Arja
AU - Perez, Laura
AU - Trüeb, Stephan
AU - Jantunen, Matti
AU - Künzli, Nino
AU - Sabel, Clive E.
N1 - Funding Information:
We thank Mikko Savastola and Tapio Kettunen for assistance in collecting the city-specific data of Kuopio. This work was supported by the 7th European Framework Programme project: Urban Reduction of GHG Emissions in China and Europe (URGENCHE: Grant Agreement No. 265114).
Copyright:
© 2015 Tuomisto et al.
PY - 2015/12/14
Y1 - 2015/12/14
N2 - Background: Public health is often affected by societal decisions that are not primarily about health. Climate change mitigation requires intensive actions to minimise greenhouse gas emissions in the future. Many of these actions take place in cities due to their traffic, buildings, and energy consumption. Active climate mitigation policies will also, aside of their long term global impacts, have short term local impacts, both positive and negative, on public health. Our main objective was to develop a generic open impact model to estimate health impacts of emissions due to heat and power consumption of buildings. In addition, the model should be usable for policy comparisons by non-health experts on city level with city-specific data, it should give guidance on the particular climate mitigation questions but at the same time increase understanding on the related health impacts and the model should follow the building stock in time, make comparisons between scenarios, propagate uncertainties, and scale to different levels of detail. We tested The functionalities of the model in two case cities, namely Kuopio and Basel. We estimated the health and climate impacts of two actual policies planned or implemented in the cities. The assessed policies were replacement of peat with wood chips in co-generation of district heat and power, and improved energy efficiency of buildings achieved by renovations. Results: Health impacts were not large in the two cities, but also clear differences in implementation and predictability between the two tested policies were seen. Renovation policies can improve the energy efficiency of buildings and reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly, but this requires systematic policy sustained for decades. In contrast, fuel changes in large district heating facilities may have rapid and large impacts on emissions. However, the life cycle impacts of different fuels is somewhat an open question. Conclusions: In conclusion, we were able to develop a practical model for city-level assessments promoting evidence-based policy in general and health aspects in particular. Although all data and code is freely available, implementation of the current model version in a new city requires some modelling skills.
AB - Background: Public health is often affected by societal decisions that are not primarily about health. Climate change mitigation requires intensive actions to minimise greenhouse gas emissions in the future. Many of these actions take place in cities due to their traffic, buildings, and energy consumption. Active climate mitigation policies will also, aside of their long term global impacts, have short term local impacts, both positive and negative, on public health. Our main objective was to develop a generic open impact model to estimate health impacts of emissions due to heat and power consumption of buildings. In addition, the model should be usable for policy comparisons by non-health experts on city level with city-specific data, it should give guidance on the particular climate mitigation questions but at the same time increase understanding on the related health impacts and the model should follow the building stock in time, make comparisons between scenarios, propagate uncertainties, and scale to different levels of detail. We tested The functionalities of the model in two case cities, namely Kuopio and Basel. We estimated the health and climate impacts of two actual policies planned or implemented in the cities. The assessed policies were replacement of peat with wood chips in co-generation of district heat and power, and improved energy efficiency of buildings achieved by renovations. Results: Health impacts were not large in the two cities, but also clear differences in implementation and predictability between the two tested policies were seen. Renovation policies can improve the energy efficiency of buildings and reduce greenhouse gas emissions significantly, but this requires systematic policy sustained for decades. In contrast, fuel changes in large district heating facilities may have rapid and large impacts on emissions. However, the life cycle impacts of different fuels is somewhat an open question. Conclusions: In conclusion, we were able to develop a practical model for city-level assessments promoting evidence-based policy in general and health aspects in particular. Although all data and code is freely available, implementation of the current model version in a new city requires some modelling skills.
KW - Building stock
KW - Cities
KW - Climate change
KW - Energy production
KW - Fine particles
KW - Health impact assessment
KW - Heating
KW - Policy support
KW - Public health
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84949788550&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1186/s12940-015-0082-z
DO - 10.1186/s12940-015-0082-z
M3 - Article
C2 - 26667475
AN - SCOPUS:84949788550
SN - 1476-069X
VL - 14
SP - 1
EP - 13
JO - Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source
JF - Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source
IS - 1
M1 - 82
ER -