Designing Retirement\nStrategies for Coal-Fired Power\nPlants To Mitigate Air Pollution and Health Impacts

Retiring coal power plants can reduce air pollution and\nhealth\ndamages. However, the spatial distribution of those impacts remains\nunclear due to complex power system operations and pollution chemistry\nand transport. Focusing on coal retirements in Pennsylvania (PA),\nwe analyze six counterfactual scenarios for 2019 that differ in retirement\ntargets (e.g., reducing 50% of coal-based installed capacity vs generation)\nand priorities (e.g., closing plants with higher cost, closer to Environmental\nJustice Areas, or with higher CO<sub>2</sub> emissions). Using a power\nsystem model of the PJM Interconnection, we find that coal retirements\nin PA shift power generation across PA and Rest of PJM, leading to\nscenario-varying changes in the plant-level release of air pollutants.\nConsidering pollution transport and the size of the exposed population,\nthese emissions changes, in turn, give rise to a reduction of 6–136\nPM<sub>2.5</sub>-attributable deaths in PJM across the six scenarios,\nwith most reductions occurring in PA. Among our designed scenarios,\nthose that reduce more coal power generation yield greater aggregate\nhealth benefits due to air quality improvements in PA and adjacent\ndownwind regions. In addition, comparing across the six scenarios\nevaluated in this study, vulnerable populationsin both PA\nand Rest of PJMbenefit most in scenarios that prioritize\nplant closures near Environmental Justice Areas in PA. These results\ndemonstrate the importance of considering cross-regional linkages\nand sociodemographics in designing equitable retirement strategies.