Chris Nielsen

Chris Nielsen is the executive director of the Harvard China Project, of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. Working with researchers across Harvard and collaborating Chinese universities, he has led the development of and managed the interdisciplinary China Project from its inception.

In atmospheric sciences, he and colleagues at Harvard and Tsinghua universities built a high-precision atmospheric measurement station north of Beijing in 2004, and now jointly analyze its unique, ongoing data record. The team combines these independent observations with those of satellites, the Project’s detailed bottom-up emission inventories, and its own advanced atmospheric model of China to investigate transport, chemistry, and environmental impacts of Chinese GHGs and air pollutants.

Another team exploits meteorological data from atmospheric sciences to improve estimates of onshore and offshore wind power potentials in China, and the prospects for integration of very large-scale wind power deployment (see cover article of Science, 09/11/2009).

Nielsen additionally co-leads a Harvard-Tsinghua team of economists, atmospheric chemists, and environmental engineers integrating the Project’s economic and atmospheric models of China, its emission inventories, and a national economy-engineering-health-policy framework developed in Clearing the Air: The Health and Economic Damages of Air Pollution in China (2007, MIT Press). The enhanced framework is used to evaluate the full health and economic benefits and costs of nearly any national strategy to limit Chinese emissions of GHGs and air pollutants. The team is currently assessing the comprehensive effects of economy-wide carbon tax options in China, including alternative tax levels, time-paths of implementation, and uses of tax revenues.

Additional Information:

• Chris Nielsen’s homepage

Publications:

• “An inventory of primary air pollutants and CO2 emissions from cement production in China, 1990-2010,” Atmospheric Environment, Volume 45, Issue 1, January 2011, Pages 147-154.
• Quantifying the uncertainties of a bottom-up emission inventory of anthropogenic atmospheric pollutants in China,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Discussions, Volume 10, Issue 11, November 2010.
• “CO2 and its correlation with CO at a rural site near Beijing: implications for combustion efficiency in China,” Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics, Volume 10, Number 18, September 2010, Pages 8881-8897
• “Establishment of a database of emission factors for atmospheric pollutants from Chinese coal-fired power plants,” Atmospheric Environment, Volume 44, Issue 12, April 2010, Pages 1515-1523
• “Potential for wind generated electricity in China,” Science, Volume 325, Issue 5946, September 2009, Pages 1378-1380.
• Clearing the Air: The Health and Economic Damages of Air Pollution in China, 2007, MIT Press.