U.S. wind and solar power generation provided $249 billion in climate and air quality health benefits from 2019 to 2022: study

New study published in the journal The cell reports sustainable development focuses on the benefits of wind and solar energy for air quality and climate.

While previous research has shown that wind and solar power generation provide significant health and climate benefits, this study provides an important update: it takes into account recent changes in the power system (including the continued expansion of wind and solar power, which provides more than 30% of total generation in some regions), includes the latest updates on health and climate impact research, provides new quantitative uncertainty analysis, and uses an approach that facilitates annual updates and replication in new regions. The article is free and publicly available.

The study assessed the benefits of wind and solar generation through the reduction of sulfur dioxide (SO₂), nitrogen oxides (NO_X) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. The study estimated the dollar value of emissions reductions and the number of premature deaths avoided.

Key conclusions

• In 2022, wind and solar power generation provided estimated total climate and health benefits of 14.3¢/kWh wind and 10.0¢/kWh solar (or in MWh units: $143/MWh wind and $100/MWh solar energy).
• Taking into account only the health benefits related to the country’s air quality, the benefits were 3.6 cents/kWh for wind ($36/MWh of wind) and 1.7 cents/kWh for solar ($17/MWh of solar), with the remainder being benefits atmospheric.
• In 2022, wind and solar power generation helped reduce sufficient SO2₂ and not_X emissions to prevent premature deaths from 1200 to 1600 in the United States (reflecting a range of uncertainty from the 5th to 95th percentile).
• The total climate and health benefits of wind and solar energy from 2019 to 2022 were $249 billion.

Wind and solar power provide air quality and climate benefits by reducing the need to generate electricity from fossil fuels such as natural gas and coal. The study used a statistical model to determine the reduction in natural gas and coal generation that occurred as a result of wind and solar generation.

The emissions characteristics of these generators were used to determine the likely amount of avoided emissions. A suite of air quality models was then used to estimate the dollar value of the national public health benefits of avoiding SO₂ and not_X the estimated social cost of carbon (the global cost of carbon emissions) was used to calculate the dollar value of climate benefits.

The study developed regional benefit estimates and showed how differences in the location of wind and solar farms lead to differences in benefits. Some of these differences can be seen in the figure below, with wind getting most of its value from the central United States, the Midwest, and Texas, compared to solar, which is more concentrated in the western United States and Texas regions.

Both technologies reduce emissions from both gas and coal plants, but the benefits of wind power are more closely tied to emissions reductions from coal plants than the benefits of solar power. An innovative aspect of the study was the accurate tracking of uncertainty through the use of Monte Carlo analysis. The resulting uncertainty limits and a discussion of key uncertainty factors are detailed in the full article.

The article includes additional discussion of topics such as inter-regional trade in wind and solar power, the co-benefits of reducing methane emissions associated with natural gas production, life cycle emissions associated with the production and construction of wind and solar power plants, how the addition of battery storage can influence emission benefit calculations and how different operating characteristics of gas and coal-fired power plants affect benefit estimates (“periodic effects”).

The approach developed in this paper relies on relatively simple inputs, allowing for annual updates and potentially paving the way for its application in other regions.