Version 1
: Received: 10 April 2024 / Approved: 11 April 2024 / Online: 11 April 2024 (07:43:21 CEST)
How to cite:
Campos, C.; Pakhtigian, E.L.; Peng, W.; Landry, J.R.; Wiseman, H.; Pham, A.T. Designing Retirement Strategies for Coal-Fired Power Plants to Mitigate Air Pollution and Health Impacts. Preprints2024, 2024040782. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.0782.v1
Campos, C.; Pakhtigian, E.L.; Peng, W.; Landry, J.R.; Wiseman, H.; Pham, A.T. Designing Retirement Strategies for Coal-Fired Power Plants to Mitigate Air Pollution and Health Impacts. Preprints 2024, 2024040782. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.0782.v1
Campos, C.; Pakhtigian, E.L.; Peng, W.; Landry, J.R.; Wiseman, H.; Pham, A.T. Designing Retirement Strategies for Coal-Fired Power Plants to Mitigate Air Pollution and Health Impacts. Preprints2024, 2024040782. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.0782.v1
APA Style
Campos, C., Pakhtigian, E.L., Peng, W., Landry, J.R., Wiseman, H., & Pham, A.T. (2024). Designing Retirement Strategies for Coal-Fired Power Plants to Mitigate Air Pollution and Health Impacts. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.0782.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Campos, C., Hannah Wiseman and An T. Pham. 2024 "Designing Retirement Strategies for Coal-Fired Power Plants to Mitigate Air Pollution and Health Impacts" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202404.0782.v1
Abstract
Retiring coal power plants can reduce air pollution and health damages. However, the spatial distribution of those impacts remains unclear due to complex power system adjustments and pollution chemistry and transport. Focusing on coal retirements in Pennsylvania (PA), we analyze six counterfactual scenarios for 2019 that differ in retirement targets (e.g., reducing 50% of coal-based installed capacity vs. generation) and priorities (e.g., closing plants with higher cost, closer to Environmental Justice Areas, or with higher CO2 emissions). Using a power system model of the PJM Interconnection, we find that coal retirements in PA shift power generation across PA and the Rest of PJM region leading to scenario-varying changes in the plant-level release of several air pollutants. Due to air pollution chemistry and transport and socio-demographics, these changes in turn give rise to a reduction of 10 to 182 PM2.5-attributable deaths in PJM across the six scenarios, with most reductions occurring in PA. Scenarios that reduce more coal power generation yield greater aggregate health benefits due to air quality improvements in PA and adjacent downwind regions. In addition, vulnerable populations—in both PA and Rest of PJM—benefit most in scenarios that prioritize plant closures in PA near Environmental Justice Areas. These results demonstrate the importance of considering cross-regional linkages and socio-demographics in designing equitable retirement strategies.
Keywords
coal retirement; air quality; human health; environmental justice
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Pollution
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
