Coal power phaseout
Overview
Burning coal is responsible for a large fraction of global energy-related CO2 emissions and is the most emissions intensive way to produce electricity. A no new coal policy — combined with accelerated retirement for existing plants — is one of the most effective strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This project focuses on strategies for phasing out coal power plants. While a groundswell of actors are working to address the climate impacts of coal, many countries are still proposing, permitting, and building new coal-fired power plants.
Our current work in this area focuses on (1) timelines for retiring coal power plants to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 or well below 2°C, (2) metrics for prioritizing plants for retirement, and (3) stranded assets from delayed action on no new coal. More recently, we are exploring approaches to phasing out coal while minimizing construction of new natural gas plants. We work at a variety of scales, from global to national to state and local.
Approach
This project combines unit-level data on coal power plants with an open-source integrated assessment model (GCAM). GCAM represents interactions among five global systems at various spatial scales: economics, energy, water, climate, and agriculture and land use. We couple detailed information on all coal plants currently operating around the world — and those in the planning stages that are yet to be completed — with GCAM to explore pathways to meeting climate policy goals in the coal sector and develop guidelines to support policy decisions. This is collaborative work with researchers at the Center for Global Sustainability and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
What we’ve found
Benefits of no new coal policies
The most effective strategy for reducing the impacts of coal use is to stop building new coal plants. New coal plants lead to larger stranded assets under climate policy scenarios and require more rapid retirement of the entire coal fleet, by ten years if all plants currently in the pipeline are built.
Lifetime limits for coal plants
Even if no new coal power plants are built, scenarios for meeting the Paris climate goals see accelerated retirement of the existing fleet. In our plant-by-plant analysis, 20-year lifetime limits are consistent with a 1.5°C scenario, and 35-year limits with a well below 2°C scenario.
Metrics to prioritize retirement
Which coal power plants plants are best to retire first depends on many criteria. However, our analysis of over 1000 plants in China finds that 18% (112 GW) perform poorly according to technical, economic, and environmental criteria and are low-hanging fruit for rapid retirement.
What’s Next
Transitions away from many other types of fossil fuel infrastructure are necessary to meet climate policy goals. Our new projects focus on extending our framework on coal power plants to examine other types of fossil fuel infrastructure and the distribution of economic and environmental impacts.