Health impacts of cross-regional transmission infrastructure: Evidence from China's ultra-high voltage projects

IF 13.6 2区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Energy Economics Pub Date : 2025-06-11 DOI:10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108669

Zhengye Gao , Li Zhao

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Abstract

Fossil fuel consumption poses a significant threat to public health. This paper provides the first empirical evidence of the health benefits associated with the world's largest cross-regional power grid project, namely, China's ultra-high-voltage (UHV) transmission system. The primary objective of this project is to transmit clean electricity from energy-rich regions to densely populated areas located thousands of kilometers away. Utilizing detailed household health data and the natural experimental setting created by the operation of UHV lines, we implement a difference-in-differences design. Our findings reveal that the operation of UHV lines significantly improves public health in the connected regions. Mechanism analysis indicates that the UHV grid promotes public health primarily by reducing air pollution and lowering energy costs. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the UHV grid's health benefits are more pronounced in regions with high electricity consumption intensity and a greater reliance on fossil fuels. Our study provides a novel solution for addressing air pollution and public health issues by investing in cross-regional transmission infrastructure to optimize power allocation across regions.

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跨区域输电基础设施对健康的影响：来自中国特高压项目的证据

化石燃料消费对公众健康构成重大威胁。本文首次提供了与世界上最大的跨区域电网项目，即中国的特高压输电系统相关的健康效益的经验证据。该项目的主要目标是将清洁电力从能源丰富的地区输送到数千公里外的人口稠密地区。利用详细的家庭健康数据和特高压线路运行所产生的自然实验环境，我们实施了差异中的差异设计。我们的研究结果表明，特高压线路的运行显著改善了连接地区的公共卫生。机制分析表明，特高压电网主要通过减少空气污染和降低能源成本来促进公众健康。异质性分析表明，特高压电网的健康效益在电力消耗强度高、对化石燃料依赖程度高的地区更为明显。我们的研究为解决空气污染和公共健康问题提供了一种新的解决方案，即通过投资跨区域输电基础设施来优化跨区域的电力分配。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Energy Economics ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

18.60

自引率

12.50%

发文量

524

期刊介绍： Energy Economics is a field journal that focuses on energy economics and energy finance. It covers various themes including the exploitation, conversion, and use of energy, markets for energy commodities and derivatives, regulation and taxation, forecasting, environment and climate, international trade, development, and monetary policy. The journal welcomes contributions that utilize diverse methods such as experiments, surveys, econometrics, decomposition, simulation models, equilibrium models, optimization models, and analytical models. It publishes a combination of papers employing different methods to explore a wide range of topics. The journal's replication policy encourages the submission of replication studies, wherein researchers reproduce and extend the key results of original studies while explaining any differences. Energy Economics is indexed and abstracted in several databases including Environmental Abstracts, Fuel and Energy Abstracts, Social Sciences Citation Index, GEOBASE, Social & Behavioral Sciences, Journal of Economic Literature, INSPEC, and more.