• Energy Research

The Global Calculator is an open-source model of the world's energy, land, and food systems. It is a pioneering online calculator to project the impact of interventions to mitigate climate change on global temperature. A few studies have been conducted to evaluate the health co-benefits of climate change mitigation, though they are still fragmentary.Our objectives are to identify which sectors could yield the greatest results in terms of climate change mitigation and suggest whether existing evidence could be used to weight mitigation actions based on their ancillary impacts on human health or health co-benefits.Using the International Energy Agency (IEA) 4DS scenario as a referent (i.e., the "4-degree Celsius increase scenario"), we simulated changes in different policy "levers" (encompassing 43 potential technological and behavioral interventions, grouped by 14 sectors) and assessed the relative importance of each lever in terms of changes in annual greenhouse gas emissions in 2050 and cumulative emissions by 2100. In addition, we examined existing estimates for the health co-benefits associated with different interventions, using evidence from the Lancet Pathfinder and four other tools.Our simulations suggest that-after accounting for demographic change-transition from fossil fuels to renewables and changes in agriculture, forestry, land use, and food production are key sectors for climate change mitigation. The role of interventions in other sectors, like carbon capture and storage (CCS) or nuclear power, is more modest. Our work also identifies mitigation actions that are likely to have large health co-benefits, including shifts to renewable energy and changes in land use as well as dietary and travel behaviors. In conclusion, some of the sectors/interventions which have been at the center of policy debate (e.g., CCS or nuclear power) are likely to be far less important than changes in areas such as dietary habits or forestry practices by 2050. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP14906.

Left unabated, climate change will have catastrophic effects on the health of present and future generations. Such effects are already seen in Europe, through more frequent and severe extreme weather events, alterations to water and food systems, and changes in the environmental suitability for infectious diseases. As one of the largest current and historical contributors to greenhouse gases and the largest provider of financing for climate change mitigation and adaptation, Europe's response is crucial, for both human health and the planet. To ensure that health and wellbeing are protected in this response it is essential to build the capacity to understand, monitor, and quantify health impacts of climate change and the health co-benefits of accelerated action. Responding to this need, the Lancet Countdown in Europe is established as a transdisciplinary research collaboration for monitoring progress on health and climate change in Europe. With the wealth of data and academic expertise available in Europe, the collaboration will develop region-specific indicators to address the main challenges and opportunities of Europe's response to climate change for health. The indicators produced by the collaboration will provide information to health and climate policy decision making, and will also contribute to the European Observatory on Climate and Health.

Abstract Background Lighting sources have been overlooked in previous estimates of the health burden attributable to household air pollution (HAP). However, lighting sources can be an important predictor of personal exposure to HAP in countries with limited access to electricity. We modeled the health and environmental impacts of hypothetical intervention scenarios that replace kerosene-based lighting with renewable electricity in East Africa. Methods We used comparative risk assessment methods to quantify the ischemic heart disease-, stroke-, lung cancer-, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease- and lower respiratory infection-related morbidity and mortality attributable to personal fine particulate matter (PM2.5) exposure due to kerosene-based lighting for residents of East Africa in 2015. We used health and demographic data from the Global Burden of Disease; PM2.5 exposure estimates from a previous study replacing kerosene-based lighting with solar lighting; and exposure-response functions from the literature to estimate the number of deaths and DALYs that could be avoided with increased scaling-up of the lighting source intervention. We estimated avoided black carbon emissions using emission factors from published literature. Results We estimated that 6218, 10,092, 12,723 deaths and 409, 654, 814 hundred thousand DALYs could be avoided if 33%, 66%, and 100% respectively of households using kerosene-based lighting replaced it with electricity in East Africa in 2015. Including lighting fuel in estimates of deaths due to PM2.5 from household air pollution in the region would add a further 9% in addition to those from cooking with solid fuel. Full replacement of kerosene-based lighting with renewable electricity would have reduced black carbon emissions by 4.4 Gg/year or 3957 CO2eq Gg in 2015, with the largest emission reductions in Uganda and Kenya. Conclusion Kerosene-based lighting is a non-negligible source of HAP in the region and should be included in assessments of the health burden attributable to HAP.

Universal access to affordable, reliable and modern energy services by 2030 is a target under the Sustainable Development Goals. Lack of access to modern energy is responsible for a high burden of respiratory and cardiovascular ill health, a burden falling largely on populations in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs).1 However, most of what we know about this burden is from evidence related to household air pollution from inefficient burning of solid fuels (including biomass). Relatively little is known about the contribution of occupational exposure to products of incomplete biomass combustion. This is reflected in the data used to track progress on sustainable energy targets, which are based on household surveys.2 3 These are highly valuable data on household energy use, but shed little light on the scale of exposures from occupational settings and their potential health impact. Awopeju et al provide preliminary data that begin to fill this gap.4 Awopeju et al aimed to assess the prevalence of respiratory symptoms in women engaged in commercial cooking using biomass fuel (referred to as street cooks) relative to similar women not engaged in commercial cooking in urban south-western Nigeria. By applying four standard questions from the Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease initiative,5 the authors showed that women exposed to occupational biomass smoke had higher …

The health impacts of global climate change mitigation will affect local populations differently. However, most co-benefits analyses have been done at a global level, with relatively few studies providing local level results. We aimed to quantify the local health impacts due to fine particles (PM2.5) under the governance arrangements embedded in the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs1-5) under two greenhouse gas concentration scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) 2.6 and 8.5) in local populations of Mozambique, India, and Spain. We simulated the SSP-RCP scenarios using the Global Change Analysis Model, which was linked to the TM5-FASST model to estimate PM2.5 levels. PM2.5 levels were calibrated with local measurements. We used comparative risk assessment methods to estimate attributable premature deaths due to PM2.5 linking local population and mortality data with PM2.5-mortality relationships from the literature, and incorporating population projections under the SSPs. PM2.5 attributable burdens in 2050 differed across SSP-RCP scenarios, and sensitivity of results across scenarios varied across populations. Future attributable mortality burden of PM2.5 was highly sensitive to assumptions about how populations will change according to SSP. SSPs reflecting high challenges for adaptation (SSPs 3 and 4) consistently resulted in the highest PM2.5 attributable burdens mid-century. Our analysis of local PM2.5 attributable premature deaths under SSP-RCP scenarios in three local populations highlights the importance of both socioeconomic development and climate policy in reducing the health burden from air pollution. Sensitivity of future PM2.5 mortality burden to SSPs was particularly evident in low- and middle- income country settings due either to high air pollution levels or dynamic populations.