Coal is the dirtiest form of energy, releasing more carbon pollution per unit of energy than any other fossil fuel. Retiring coal power plants will not only help us reach climate goals, but will also significantly benefit public health. In this webinar, Dr. Grace Wu, Sidney Gathrid, and Dr. Ranjit Deshmukh will present exciting new research on how we can use retirement frameworks to develop targeted strategies to accelerate coal plant retirements.

Strategically planning the phase-out of coal power is critical to achieve climate targets, yet current approaches often fail to account for the context-specific barriers and vulnerabilities to coal plant retirement. Here we introduce a framework that combines graph theory and topological data analysis to classify the US coal fleet into eight distinct groups based on technical, economic, environmental and socio-political characteristics.

We calculate each non-retiring coal plant’s ‘contextual retirement vulnerability’ score and identify ‘retirement archetypes’ to inform group-specific strategies for accelerating retirements. Our findings reveal the diverse strategies that are required to accelerate the phase-out of remaining coal plants, including regulatory compliance, public health campaigns and economic incentives.