Health Co-Benefits of Post-COVID-19 Low-Carbon Recovery in Chinese Cities

Post-pandemic green recovery is pivotal in achieving global sustainable development goals by simultaneously revitalizing economies and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, air pollution and improving public welfare. However, subnational and city-level understanding of green recovery, its efficacy and its alignment with public health is poorly understood. Here we focus on post-COVID-19 low-carbon recovery—economic growth combined with reduced carbon emissions—and explore health co-benefits in Chinese cities. A novel near-real-time daily carbon emission dataset of 48 cities in China is developed, coupled with detailed health and economic municipal statistics and models. We find that, on average, six low-carbon-recovery cities, mainly megacities, saved 1.2 times as many lives per 100,000 population compared with the 42 other cities, and their annual monetary avoided premature deaths per 100,000 population was 1.5 times more than the 42 other cities. The accumulated monetary health co-benefits for low-carbon-recovery cities were US$ 4.2 billion (95% confidence interval, 2.1–6.3) during the post-COVID-19 period. We show that government spending on electric vehicles increases the likelihood of achieving low-carbon recovery in Chinese cities. Our results underscore the significant health co-benefits of low-carbon recovery, pointing to synergies between advancing local welfare and global environmental objectives.