Liqun Peng

Position
STEP Ph.D. 2023
Bio/Description

I am a Ph.D. student in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. I am interested in assessing potential benefits of emission mitigation policies to air quality, climate change and health, advised by Professor Denise Mauzerall.

I am currently assessing potential benefits of pollutant mitigation policies as well as the effect of renewable energy and new control technologies to air quality, climate change and associated health impacts. For example, with the urbanization of developing countries, rural-urban migration is associated with a spatial relocation of emissions from rural to urban areas. The increased population exposed to these emissions results in effects on public health. How to optimize energy consumption, transition to a cleaner energy mix and mitigate the air pollutants and GHGs emission is an important issue in energy and environmental usage and policy.

Prior to arriving at Princeton, I earned an M.A. in environmental engineering from Tsinghua University in China (2016), and a B.A. from Beijing Forestry University in China (2013).

My master’s thesis focused on fuel use and emissions from the residential sector in rural China. I worked on quantifying the fuel consumption and air pollutant emissions based on large survey data in 2010 and 2015. Rural residential fuel use is a large contributor to the anthropogenic air pollutant emissions resulting from high emission factors and unregulated technologies. However, limited by data availability, the residential emission inventory was not reliable, and had a large margin of error. I developed and increased the accuracy of the residential emission inventory by analyzing and modeling nationwide survey data for rural residential fuel-use patterns.

I also worked on the impact of electric vehicles on air quality and public health in China. I projected vehicular air pollutant emissions in China under different electrification scenarios. I then estimated air quality and climate impact resulting from different scenarios by using WRF-CMAQ modeling and comparing health benefits using IER modeling.

 

Selected Publications

Assessment of socioeconomic costs to China's air pollution. Yang Xia, Dabo Guan, Xujia Jiang, Liqun Peng, Heike Schroeder and Qiang Zhang (2016), Atmos. Environ., 139, 147-156. 

Revealing the hidden health costs embodied in Chinese exports, Xujia Jiang, Qiang Zhang, Hongyan Zhao, Gengguan Geng, Liqun Peng, Dabo Guan, Haidong Kan, Hong Huo, Jintai Lin, Michael Brauer, Randall V. Martin, and Kebin He (2015), Environ. Sci. Tech., 49, 4381-4388. doi: 10.1021/es506121s.

Emission inventory of atmospheric pollutants from open burning of crop residues in China based on a national questionnaire. Liqun Peng, Qiang Zhang, and KeBin He (2016), Res. Environ. Sci., 29, 1109-1118. (In Chinese).