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Improving cost–benefit analyses for health-considered climate mitigation policymaking

Nature Climate Change volume 15, pages 709–718 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

There is growing discussion about enhancing climate policy efficiency by prioritizing health, with expectations for including health co-benefits in the next round of nationally determined contribution updates. Critical to this effort is the need to compare the benefits to the costs of mitigation. Here we synthesize the current cost-effectiveness of climate policies based on health-included cost–benefit analyses and identify key research challenges and opportunities for scaling up health-considered or even health-centred climate policies. Furthermore, we show factors essential to accelerating the development and implementation of mitigation policies, including providing tangible and policy-relevant health co-benefits, promoting interdisciplinary contributions and cross-sector policy engagement, conducting regional studies and improving inter-study comparability, and exploring health-considered optimized strategies.

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Fig. 1: Global and regional cumulative health BCRs under different 2 °C scenarios from 2020 to 2050.
Fig. 2: Conceptual framework for optimizing health-considered mitigation pathways.

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Acknowledgements

W.C. acknowledges funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72091514, 72140002) and the China Meteorological Administration Climate Change Special Program (CMA-CCSP). S.Z. acknowledges funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72204137). M.Z. acknowledges funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72403022), the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (2023M740252) and the Postdoctoral Fellowship Program of CPSF (GZC20233394). C.Z. acknowledges funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72104029) C.W. acknowledges funding from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72348001).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth System Science, Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Institute for Global Change Studies, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Jianxiang Shen & Wenjia Cai

  2. School of Ecology and Environment, Renmin University of China, Beijing, China

    Shihui Zhang

  3. School of Management, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

    Mengzhen Zhao & Chi Zhang

  4. School of Global Governance, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, China

    Mengzhen Zhao & Chi Zhang

  5. State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control (SKLESPC), School of Environment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China

    Can Wang

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  4. Chi Zhang
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  5. Wenjia Cai
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J.S., C.Z., W.C. and C.W. conceived and designed the paper. J.S., S.Z. and M.Z. contributed material. J.S. and W.C. drafted the paper with input from all co-authors. All authors read and approved the final version of the paper.

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Correspondence to Wenjia Cai.

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Shen, J., Zhang, S., Zhao, M. et al. Improving cost–benefit analyses for health-considered climate mitigation policymaking. Nat. Clim. Chang. 15, 709–718 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-025-02351-9

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