Health benefits of greenhouse gas mitigation
Earlier analyses with the GAINS model indicated significant human health benefits due to reduced air pollution from mitigation measures targeted at long-lived greenhouse gases. In 2012 MAG researchers published global estimates of such co-benefits. Rafaj et al. (2012) show that a global decarbonization strategy could significantly reduce the loss of life expectancy from fine particulate matter, for example, by about a half in Asia, and save nearly 20,000 premature deaths per year. At the same time, such a global mitigation scheme would save about 250 billion €/year in air pollution control costs due to lower combustion of fossil fuels. Similar findings emerge from the MAG contributions to the Global Energy Assessment (Anon, 2012; Rao et al., 2012).