(306a) Characterizing the Direct and Induced Socioeconomic Impacts of Coal Plant Decommissioning

As the coal fleet in the United States ages and planned coal capacity retirements increase, North American coal communities face increasing uncertainty about their future. Utah’s Castle Country is an excellent example of a community often subject to unexpected policy or corporate resource planning changes. The Carbon Power Plant was shuttered in 2015 due to similar policy changes regarding mercury emissions. While the Hunter, Huntington, and Intermountain plants shielded the community from many economic consequences, it is unlikely that the community will ever fully recover from a full green energy transition. An established energy transition strategy is essential for preparing coal communities and policymakers to mitigate the environmental and socioeconomic impacts.

A key component of pre-planning is an economic impact analysis. Economic impact analyses consider direct changes in cash flows and employment associated with decommissioning, construction, and operations. A combination of boilerplate financial models, economic data, and first principles cost estimates are used to develop the inputs. These are fed into an economic model to estimate the indirect and induced effects of policy decisions and economic activities. Many tools are available to describe direct economic activities from new nuclear and renewable buildouts. Still, the publicly available resources for coal-fired power plants' closure and post-closure operations are extremely limited.

This study seeks to consolidate and provide economic input data and boilerplates for energy transition impact studies on coal-dependent communities. By combining data from multifarious resources, this research develops economic inputs for the retirement, remediation, and post-closure monitoring of coal-fired power plants.

To demonstrate the utility of these tools, they are applied to Utah’s Castle Country region, and used to inform a community economic optimization study conducted in partnership with the Garnder Policy Institute. Results show a small but measurable difference from the baseline model in local economic effects.