Ancillary Benefits of Climate Change Mitigation in Russia

This paper demonstrates the strong link between the implementation of a GHG emission mitigation policy and the reduction of human health risk related to air pollution in Russia. The human health risk analysis method was introduced in Russia in the late 1990s. After a few pilot studies, this method has been in studies in several Russian cities with high populations and high air pollution. These studies demonstrate that among the hundreds of pollutants controlled by Russian law, a handful are responsible for up to 90% of human health risk from air pollution (PM$_{10}$ and SO$_{2}$ contribute the most). Fossil fuel combustion is the main source of the aforementioned conventional pollutants. This paper provides an overview of local ancillary benefits studies in selected Russian cities. The countrywide energy study presented in this paper proves that reduction of GHG emissions in the power generation sector would result in the reduction of these conventional pollutants in all regions. A major challenge for Russia in this process is a potential increase of the share of coal in the fuel mix. Such a change would result in the additional loss of 118,000 years of life countrywide. In the Central and Volgo-Viatsky regions additional mortality could increase by more than 30%. As a result of a GHG mitigation policy that avoided an increase in the coal share of the fuel mix could produce ancillary benefits in 2010 around $60 per ton of CO2 emission reduction in power sector alone.