Health co-benefits from air pollutant reduction through coal-fired power plant cancellations

Phasing out coal is a critical pillar of a deep decarbonization pathway, and at the same time it also helps address local air pollution related health issues in many developing countries. This study examines local air quality improvements and health co-benefits from canceling new and retiring existing coal-fired power plants worldwide. Specifically, we couple an integrated human-earth system model (GCAM) with an air quality model (TM5-FASST) to evaluate the emission levels of local air pollutants, the concentrations of particulate matter in the atmosphere and the associated premature deaths across different coal power futures based on a global unit-level database of proposed coal power plants. We find that simply canceling all new projects that are currently under development would decrease the amount of global air pollution driven premature deaths from 4% to 9% in 2030 and 2050, respectively. These are comparable to implementing the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in the same time horizon. While air quality improves in many regions across the world, health benefits from canceling new coal projects are concentrated in India, Eastern China and Indonesia, because of high population density. We then evaluate the regional health impacts from phasing out existing coal, which provides additional incentives for coal phase-out and climate change mitigation.