Climate and health benefits of increasing renewable energy deployment in the United States*

Abstract

The type, size, and location of renewable energy (RE) deployment dramatically affects benefits to climate and health. Here, we develop a ten-region model to assess the magnitude of health and climate benefits across the US We then use this model to assess the benefits of deploying varying capacities of wind, utility-scale solar photovoltaics (PV), and rooftop solar PV in different regions in the US-a total of 284 different scenarios. Total benefits ranged from $2.2 trillion for 3000 MW of wind in the Upper Midwest to $4.2 million for 100 MW of wind in California. Total benefits and highest cost effectiveness for CO 2 reduction were generally highest for RE deployment in the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic US and lowest in California. Health was a substantial portion of total benefits in nearly all regions of the US Benefits were sensitive to methane leakage throughout the gas supply chain.

Integrating Air Quality and Public Health Benefits in U.S. Decarbonization Strategies

“…-U.S. EPA's AVoided Emissions and geneRation Tool (AVERT) (105) was the most used emissions model, used in four studies (83)(84)(85)(86).…”

“…Four compare the co-benefits of different renewable energy deployments in various regions of the U.S. (79,81,83,86); two, the air quality co-benefits of renewable energy deployed across the continental United States (82,85). Emissions were quantified with data and analysis tools (83,85,86), a capacity expansion model (80,82), a production cost model (81,84) or an emissions inventory (79). Most use a reduced-form air quality model; only Abel et al (84) and Plachinski et al (80) use a full physics air quality model to evaluate energy efficiency and renewable energy benefits.…”

Health and Climate Benefits of Heat Adaptation Strategies in Single-Family Residential Buildings

“…There is a large suite of adaptation interventions and retrofits that would reduce indoor temperatures and reduce energy demand. These climate change adaptation retrofits, like those simulated within this paper, result in regional climate and health benefits accrued from reductions in GHG and AP emissions generated through energy production (Buonocore et al, 2016(Buonocore et al, , 2019MacNaughton et al, 2018). These indirect benefits to climate and health are not widely considered in the planning and implementation of climate change adaptation strategies.…”

“…This analysis employs several publicly available tools and follows similar methodology and model framework as other research on the topic (Buonocore et al, 2016(Buonocore et al, , 2019MacNaughton et al, 2018). We translated energy reductions output from the building simulations into GHG emission (CO 2, CH 4 , and N 2 O) and criteria AP emission (PM 2.5 , SO 2 , and NO x ) reductions using the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Emissions and Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID) which provided emissions factors for GHG's and AP's of interest (US EPA, 2018).…”

“…The development and implementation of building energy codes such as ASHRAE 90.1, IECC, and non-mandatory systems such as LEED in the U.S. (ASHRAE, 2016;International Code Council, 2018;USGBC), have resulted in a push toward more efficient buildings. While reducing building energy demand (and utility cost) has been the main target of these efforts, regional climate and health benefits accrue from reductions in GHG and AP emissions (Buonocore et al, 2016(Buonocore et al, , 2019MacNaughton et al, 2018). Further, these energy reduction measures can also enhance resiliency of buildings to extreme heat through indoor temperature reductions (Silvero et al, 2019b).…”