New seed grant to study the features of power plant phaseout processes

Building an empirical foundation for projecting plant retirements

The Deployment Lab has received a new seed grant from the HKUST Fund for Collaborative Research to study historical coal plant retirement processes and inform realistic projections of plant phaseout timelines and associated GHG emissions reductions.

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Project Abstract

The phase-out of CO2-intensive infrastructure is vital to climate change mitigation scenarios as envisioned in energy-economic and integrated assessment models. Coal-fired power plants, for example, are assumed to retire rapidly even in regions where plants are relatively new. In reality, retirements are complex, multi-year, multi-stakeholder processes that result in various outcomes, ranging from plant conversions (e.g., coal to natural gas or hydrogen) to adjacent new builds that leverage existing grid connection points (e.g., solar PV), to complete demolitions. However, past phase-out experiences at 2,782 coal-fired units globally have yet to be analyzed. Mapping the duration, cost, secondary plant use, and other characteristics of phase-out processes is critical to developing more realistic projections of retirement timelines and identifying conditions that make successful retirements more likely. This project will build a database of plant retirement durations and other retirement process features, to ultimately generate empirically grounded projections of plant retirement timelines and associated emissions declines.