AAAR 36th Annual Conference October 16 - October 20, 2017 Raleigh Convention Center Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Abstract View
Quantifying PM2.5 Health Benefits of Coal Power Plant Phase-out in Ontario and Alberta: An Adjoint Sensitivity Analysis
Burak Y. Oztaner, Marjan Soltanzadeh, Shunliu Zhao, AMIR HAKAMI, Matt Turner, Daven Henze, Shannon Capps, Peter Percell, Jaroslav Resler, Jesse Bash, Sergey Napelenok, Kathleen Fahey, Rob Pinder, Armistead G. Russell, Athanasios Nenes, Jaemeen Baek, Gregory Carmichael, Charles Stanier, Adrian Sandu, Tianfeng Chai, Daewon Byun, Carleton University
Abstract Number: 490 Working Group: Regional and Global Air Quality and Climate Modeling
Abstract Several studies have calculated the health impacts of Coal-Fired Power Plants (CFPP) in Canada and the US. In 2005 the Ontario government applied a policy to shut down CFPPs in the province by the end of 2013. Now the Alberta government, which has more CFPP emissions than other provinces in Canada, is planning to phase out coal plants in the province by 2030. We conduct a backward sensitivity analysis to re-evaluate Ontario’s coal phase-out plan and to estimate the marginal health benefits from Alberta’s proposed strategy for cancel out the CFPPs.
The CFPP phase-out was examined by scenario-based reduction of mortality rate analysis in previous studies. In this study, we conduct a backward/adjoint analysis to provide source-specific perspective into the effectiveness of CFPP shut downs, as well as the addition of natural gas power plants that replaced them. In our analysis, we determine the marginal health benefits of phasing out the CF power plants in Ontario and Alberta. Also, the study compares these impacts with contributions from other sources, as well as that of the cross border emissions from the US.
We apply U.S. EPA’s (CMAQ) and its adjoint to quantify the health benefits of emission reduction of PM2.5. Meteorological inputs are from the (WRF) model, and emissions for Canada and the US are taken from National Pollutant Release Inventory (NPRI) and National Emission Inventory (NEI), respectively. Subsequently, these emissions are processed in (SMOKE) model to get hourly emissions. The simulations are done over a 36 km spatial resolution Canada-wide domain and 12 km spatial resolution Alberta and Ontario domains. Marginal benefits due to the reduced PM2.5 and the subsequent impact on long-term mortality are calculated and compared to those found previously in scenario-based studies. Our primarily results show that in 2011, marginal health benefits of PM2.5 reduction due to phasing out Nanticoke and Lambton power plants in Ontario were as high as 98k $/tone of PM2.5. The findings of marginal health benefit analysis and an evaluation matrix for control policy options for Alberta and Ontario will be discussed.