Clean energy could prevent 150 million deaths from air pollution, with polluted cities in developing countries benefiting the most from it.

Speeding up progress on reducing carbon emissions would save millions of lives, mostly in metropolitan areas of Africa and Asia.

To keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the world would need to cut the majority of fossil-fuel related carbon emissions this century – and because this would also reduce air pollution locally, it would prevent 150 million premature deaths, according to a paper published in Nature Climate Change.

The researchers found that reducing this century’s expected carbon dioxide emissions by 180 gigatonnes – the amount needed to meet the 1.5 degree target, or keep global warming at 2 degrees without negative emissions– would mean moving to a largely renewables-sourced energy system.

Making this shift sooner rather than later would save an estimated 90 million lives by 2100 due to reduced exposure to fine particles, according to the study. Another 60 million deaths could be prevented because of reduced ozone levels.

“The public health benefits of very low carbon policies are enormous,” says Drew Shindell, a climate researcher at Duke University in North Carolina, United States, and co-author of the paper.

Last year saw the first increase in global CO2 emissions in four years, which puts added pressure on governments to live up to their emission reduction targets. While industrialised countries remain the biggest emitters by far, the researchers point out that developing countries avoid slipping down the fossil fuel pathway.

“Developing countries are largely in control of their own fate when it comes to air pollution,” says Shindell. “They’d have to make big changes to get off fossil fuels but they’d reap enormous benefits locally via air quality if they did so.”

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