This story was originally published at Planet Detroit, a nonprofit news source covering the environment in Detroit and Michigan.

Electricity generation from coal and gas-fired power plants exact an inequitable health cost that utilities should account for when planning for the future.

That’s according to testimony submitted on April 28 to the Michigan Public Service Commission by the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center on behalf of 23 individuals and organizations. 

MPSC opened the docket in August of 2020 as part of an effort to better integrate resource planning with planning for distribution and transmission. But it’s also seeking input on methods for incorporating environmental justice and public health considerations into how utilities plan to meet future energy needs.

The findings will inform new rules for filing requirements in utilities’ integrated resource plans. In 2016, Michigan began requiring utilities to file IRPs with the MPSC every five years that project demand and the mix of energy resources to meet demand over the next 5, 10, and 15 years. 

In December 2019, Administrative Law Judge Sally Wallace issued a 197-page opinion on DTE Energy’s initial IRP, forcing the utility back to the drawing board. Wallace wrote that “public health impacts, to the extent these impacts can be identified, assigned, and the associated costs quantified, should be recognized as part of the retirement analysis in future IRPs” and that “DTE customers living in proximity to the company’s fossil generating plants are certainly paying healthcare costs associated with exposure to air pollutants emitted by these units.”

Wallace cited the work of George D. Thurston, a Professor of Environmental Medicine at the New York University School of Medicine, who documented adverse health impacts resulting from exposure to pollutants emitted by fossil-fuel electricity generation. Thurston noted decreased lung function, increased childhood asthma and heart attacks, increased ER visits and hospitalizations, and higher death rates in those exposed to air pollution; that it is “quite feasible for a utility to evaluate public health impacts in an IRP;” and that “DTE should be required to assess public health impacts, and their costs, as part of its planning for fossil generating units.”

One method for evaluating public health impacts is through a Health Impact Assessment, defined by the Centers for Disease Control as a “process that helps evaluate the potential health effects of a plan, project, or policy before it is built or implemented.”

GLELC executive director Nicholas Leonard included unpublished research conducted by University of Michigan researchers in the testimony, including an HIA of DTE’s current coal-fired power plants. 

“This is the first time the public service commission is engaging in public health and environmental justice issues in the integrated resource planning process,” Leonard said. “These are things that the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition and GLELC have been thinking about for a long time. And so we want to lay a strong foundation for building those considerations into the process for future consideration.”

The UM researchers’ HIA found that DTE’s coal-fired power plants are disproportionately located in communities of color. The health burden resulting from the air pollution they generate disproportionately falls on low- to moderate-income neighborhoods primarily inhabited by African Americans, Latinx, and Arab Americans. The analysis also showed that high household energy burdens, low residential energy efficiency, and extreme heat exposure are concentrated in the same census tracts that are more exposed to DTE air pollution.

“There are substantial health impacts of current energy production,” said Dr. Amy Schulz,  one of the researchers and professor at the University of Michigan School of Public Health. “And we have opportunities as part of the integrated resource planning process to examine those and to modify decisions in ways that reduce harm, that also allows us to look at equity. We have opportunities to reduce the inequitable distribution of health costs.”

According to the analysis, health costs attributed to exposures from DTE emissions in some Wayne County census tracts cost as much as $183 per person annually. In less-exposed census tracts in the region, those costs were as low as 17 cents per person. 

At the same time, people living in higher-exposure census tracts enjoy less benefit from power generation. Those areas tend to be disproportionately more impoverished and inhabited by people of color. They tend to have less energy-efficient housing and a higher energy burden, or proportion of income going to pay energy bills.

“The decision-making about our energy future must include the true costs of energy, and take into account the disparate health impacts on communities of color and low-income communities who too often bear the pollution burden of our current energy system, while unable to affordably enjoy its benefit,” said Dr. Tony Reames, one of the researchers and an assistant professor at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability.

GLELC’s testimony recommends that the MPSC require utilities to conduct a Health Impact Assessment for each model run required by the Michigan Public Service Commission and each scenario proposed by the utility as part of future IRP requirements. Current rules do not require utilities to consider the public health or environmental justice impacts of electricity generation in IRPs. 

MPSC Chair Dan Scripps said the commission has already asked EGLE to include public health and environmental justice considerations as part of its required filing in IRP cases going forward. MPSC staff is expected to issue its report on the docket on May 27, informing the commission’s work to update planning parameters and filing requirements for integrated resource plans, as required every five years by statute. Until then, the public can comment in the docket or endorse GLELC’s testimony.

In the interim, three Michigan utilities including Consumers Energy, are scheduled to issue IRPs this year. MPSC staff issued guidance in February on modeling requirements designed to address the goals of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s September executive directive setting a goal for Michigan to achieve a 28% reduction to economy-wide carbon emissions compared to 2005 levels and establishing the MI Healthy Climate Plan. Scripps noted those requirements will also help address health and justice issues.

“We wanted to accelerate the inclusion of the governor’s goals… and how those match up with the utility plans,” Scripps said. “And we needed to do that before the planning parameters, and filing requirements were formally completed in 2022.”

Consumers Energy responded to a request for comment with an emailed statement from public information director Brian Wheeler: “Consumers Energy stands unapologetically for diversity, equity, and inclusion. We commend efforts by the MPSC and EGLE to consider environmental justice and health in important energy issues that affect Michigan. Consumers Energy will file a new IRP this summer and has considered environmental justice and health in our planning.”

GLELC’s testimony also recommends utilities collect race, income, and geography data to identify race and income-based inequities in utility operations. 

“We need more robust data collection to identify the inequities that we think likely already exist in utility operations, just as they exist in all facets of our society,” Leonard said. “And without that data, you can’t meaningfully promote environmental justice.”

Scripps declined to comment on whether the MPSC might ultimately require HIAs in IRPs or require utilities to collect race and income data around their operations, citing the need to allow the process to play out. But he acknowledged that the recommendations align “directionally” with the MPSC’s thinking.

“We want to see more data. Having the information is the starting point. I think there are probably different ways to get it,” Scripps said. “We’re asking how do we get a better record on public health and environmental justice in our IRPs, how do we start getting more granular data to make sure that we’re aware of how the system’s functioning and places where it can be improved.”

Michigan utilities should prioritize public health inequities in retirement plans, regulator says is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The clinicians’ group sees clean energy standards as a key part of addressing climate change and its disparate health impacts.

A statewide group of healthcare clinicians has joined the list of those calling for a swift repeal of the Ohio coal and nuclear bailout law at the center of an alleged dark money conspiracy.

Ohio Clinicians for Climate Action is especially concerned about the harmful impacts of air pollution and climate change. House Bill 6 subsidizes two 1950s-era coal plants, as well as two nuclear plants now owned by Energy Harbor (formerly FirstEnergy Solutions). The law also guts Ohio’s clean energy standards by eliminating further targets under the energy efficiency standard and substantially rolling back and weakening the renewable energy standard.

“Doctors in Ohio and elsewhere understand that accelerating to a clean energy economy is important for our public health,” said Aparna Bole, a member of Ohio Clinicians for Climate Action’s advisory council who works as a pediatrician at UH Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital in Cleveland. “We’d like to see policy measures that support accelerating to a clean energy economy, rather than putting up roadblocks.”

The energy efficiency standard had set enforceable targets for reducing overall electricity demand. The renewable energy standard set market-based targets for electricity suppliers to produce or procure a share of their power from renewable sources. Over time, both standards would lead to lower fossil fuel use without direct subsidies to specific generators. On balance, the standards were projected to save ratepayers more than they cost.

“During the current respiratory pandemic, we see now that air pollution worsens COVID-19 outcomes, which underscores the importance of safeguarding cleaner air for all Ohioans, now and in the future,” said the group’s letter to lawmakers. Approximately 30 doctors, nurses and health professionals have signed on, according to OCCA program director Anna Cifranic.

Air pollution has been linked to a variety of respiratory and circulatory diseases. Leaving the clean energy standards in place could avoid more than 44,000 asthma attacks, 4,400 heart attacks and 2,800 early deaths in Ohio, the letter said. In the Cleveland area where Bole practices, more than one in five children have asthma, she said. That’s roughly two-and-a-half times the nationwide childhood asthma rate of 7.5%.

“By rolling back or eliminating the renewable energy standards, we will not only see an uptick in patient maladies, but we will also experience rising healthcare costs, in part, due to chronic illnesses impacted by polluted air, further burdening our lower-income patients,” the OCCA’s letter said. On the flip side, it noted that supporting continued emissions from the two coal-fired power plants will worsen air quality, especially for people in nearby communities.

Doctors organized Ohio Clinicians for Climate Action in 2014 as a way to call attention to the need for action on climate change. Advisory board member William Hardie is a pediatric pulmonologist at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, where he treats patients with asthma, cystic fibrosis, premature lungs, and other breathing problems.

“There’s no doubt that when we have bad air days in Cincinnati — whether it’s ozone or fine particulates — these patients struggle more,” Hardie said. But air pollution doesn’t affect only children who are already susceptible.

“Ozone, as well as other air pollution, can really have an impact on developing lungs of children,” Hardie said. High pollution levels correlate with reduced levels of lung function, he noted. Reduced lung function in turn is linked to a lower overall life expectancy. “There’s undoubtedly strong data that these elevated ozone levels contribute to increased morbidity and mortality in children and adults,” he said.

“Clean energy results in cleaner air immediately,” Bole said. “That’s an immediate health benefit.”

Disproportionate impacts

The health impacts of climate change fall disproportionately on people of color and low-income communities.

“Race is an excellent predictor of proximity to environmental health hazards,” Bole said. And low-income communities also are more likely to have greater risks, she added. “Given that baseline, when we address environmental health hazards, we are advancing health equity.”

People of color and people in lower-income communities are more likely to be exposed to pollution from both power and industrial plants and from nonpoint or mobile sources, Bole said. Yet those people get a disproportionately smaller share of the economic benefits from fossil fuel use, she added.

Communities that have been subject to historic redlining also often have fewer green spaces with tree cover to counter urban heat island effects from climate change, and neighborhoods also are generally less safe for walking and other outdoor activities, Bole said. More bad air quality days as a result of climate change will further restrict opportunities for outdoor activities, aggravating obesity and other health problems.

Air pollution from fossil fuels has also been linked to a variety of other pediatric health concerns, including low birth weights and infant mortality. A 2018 study cited in the OCCA letter found a 20% decrease in preterm births for families living within 10 kilometers of eight fossil fuel power plants that had closed.  

In Cuyahoga County, where Bole practices in the greater Cleveland area, preliminary data for 2019 show that the overall infant mortality rate was about 8.6 per thousand live births. But the rate for African American infant deaths was above 16 per thousand live births. And with whites outnumbering African Americans by more than two to one countywide, that means Black babies are four times more likely to die than white babies. Air pollution is just one of several factors, but it and other factors are linked to systemic racism.

“I believe all of us need to come together to solve these massive issues, and that these issues are tied to each other,” said Shanelle Smith Whigham, who’s now vice president for sustainability and social impact for Key Bank in Cleveland. Previously, she was state director for the Trust for Public Land and was deputy director for sustainability for Cuyahoga County.

Speaking at an Oct. 13 webinar on climate justice and health, Smith Whigham recalled growing up near a large oil refinery in Lima, Ohio. As a child, she often rode her Big Wheel indoors, in order to avoid refinery odors, she noted.

The health professionals’ group sent the letter on HB 6 to members of the Ohio House of Representatives last week, although it’s not clear how soon or whether the House will vote on pending bills to repeal HB 6.

Meanwhile, OCCA and the Cleveland Clinic Foundation Center for Continuing Education will hold a multi-day online symposium this week on climate change and health. 

“Climate solutions are health solutions, and that’s what health professionals are hoping to convey in our education and advocacy efforts,” Bole said.

Ohio healthcare professionals join call for HB 6 repeal is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

The coronavirus pandemic has hammered healthcare systems for rural populations already struggling with the loss of coal jobs and health coverage.

“Transition in Coal Country” is a collaboration of the Energy News Network and WyoFile, made possible by a grant from the Just Transition Fund. The series, reported by Mason Adams and Dustin Bleizeffer, examines how the declining coal industry presents immediate and long-term changes for coal communities in Wyoming and Appalachia, how those communities are coping with change, and what they might learn from each other in charting a path to a sustainable future beyond coal.

Read the rest of the series:
Part one: What’s next for coal country?
Part two: Coal country faces a healthcare crisis
Part three: Coal communities increasingly rely on federal health programs
Part four: How lax fiscal policy has left states flat-footed as mining declines
Part five: Coal country envisions paths forward in manufacturing, reclamation and renewables

Even before the coronavirus pandemic hit, the only hospital serving a vast swath of Wyoming’s coal country was in financial trouble.

Gillette-based Campbell County Health’s revenue began to slip after a 2016 downturn in coal, marked by hundreds of layoffs at Powder River Basin mines in northeast Wyoming. The sprawling complex of surface mines produces nearly 40% of the nation’s coal. 

A series of coal company bankruptcies followed, along with more layoffs. Campbell County Health Chief Operating Officer Colleen Heeter said the community began losing healthcare workers because they moved away with spouses who were let go from the mines.

A “ransom” cyber attack hit the hospital in September 2019, arresting its operations for two weeks — costing it an estimated $2 million to $3 million. Then COVID-19 struck, causing patients to put off visits and elective procedures — sapping 50% of the hospital’s revenue. 

More layoffs and furloughs at the mines followed, on top of hundreds of jobs that suddenly disappeared in Powder River Basin oil fields. Energy analysts warn the worst is yet to come; they predict some mines in the region might close within the year.

“We know we have to make some changes as it relates to the new normal,” Heeter said. 

The coal industry’s outsized influence on local healthcare plays out in coal communities across the nation, which tend to be located in rural areas where providing a full slate of healthcare services was a struggle long before coal’s backslide and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

While healthcare providers are struggling in rural communities across the country, the situation at Campbell County Health illustrates the compounding economic crises of the coronavirus pandemic and a historic downturn in coal — forces that strike particularly hard for coal communities in both central Appalachia and Wyoming. 

Hospitals in both regions have long struggled with aspects of their rural circumstances: chronic health conditions, aging populations and too few people to pay for the increasing costs of healthcare. Rural coal communities that had enjoyed a patient base with a moderate level of private insurance are seeing more patients rely on Medicaid and Medicare. They’re also seeing an alarming increase in uncompensated care.

Nationally, “the average rural hospital has a 4% operating margin, and most of that margin comes from services provided to people with private insurance,” said Beth O’Connor, executive director of the Virginia Rural Health Association. “If you take those services away, nothing else is paying the bills. I would be amazed if everybody survives.”

There have been 12 closures among rural U.S. hospitals so far this year, according to the University of North Carolina’s Rural Health Research Program. The number is likely to grow substantially before year’s end.

“Everybody is scrambling,” said Debrin Jenkins, executive director of the West Virginia Rural Health Association. “These hospitals were already running in the red even before this.”

Hospitals in coal country at the breaking point

Two hospitals have closed this year in West Virginia, and a third is set to shutter by the end of July, all in coal-producing counties. Fairmont Regional Medical Center in Marion County closed in mid-March, and Williamson Memorial Hospital in Mingo County closed in April. More hospital closures are likely to follow.

Hospitals in coal country were structured to rely on a steady tax base from the industry, as well as good-paying jobs that provide health benefits to employees and their families. The permanent losses in coal, along with its effects on ancillary businesses, have destabilized the existing system of how healthcare is paid for and delivered. It’s a monumental challenge for rural coal communities, and an essential component of a community’s chances of survival beyond coal.

Robust healthcare services are as crucial as housing, roads, water and schools if any rural community is to survive, let alone reinvent itself after the loss of a legacy industry that paid most of the bills. Yet coal’s decline has undercut the ability of local businesses and governments to invest in maintaining those assets.

“It’s the perfect storm for those communities,” said Eric Boley, president of the Wyoming Hospital Association and previously administrator at South Lincoln Medical Center in Kemmerer. “Even prior to COVID-19, the downturn in coal had a really detrimental impact on the communities in a lot of different ways.”

For decades, the coal town of Kemmerer, Wyoming, has relied on the Naughton power plant, associated coal mine and a pair of natural gas processing plants to boost local revenue and help financially support healthcare. One of the three coal-burning units at Naughton powered down in 2019; another will go offline in 2025 while the third is converted to natural gas — actions that will cost hundreds of jobs at the power plant and the Kemmerer Mine.

Rock Springs, Glenrock, Gillette and other Wyoming energy towns faced similar circumstances before the COVID-19 pandemic hammered coal and the oil and gas industries.

“Now, you’ve got hospitals that are literally hemorrhaging [money] because they’ve stopped all of the [elective] procedures and all of the things that actually bring revenue into their hospitals,” Boley said in April. “COVID-19 has just had a total catastrophic impact on healthcare in our state.”

Even as medical providers lean on telehealth technology, many of their patients have poor cell service and worse internet. O’Connor said that one southwestern Virginia hospital still relies on film mammography because it doesn’t have the broadband capacity for a digital machine.

At the same time, coal’s decline continues to sap revenue for hospitals. For example, a portion of Campbell County Health’s funding comes from a mill levy based on property taxes; the healthier the local economy, the more money it generates for the hospital. The county’s three mills dedicated to the hospital generated $18 million three years ago — barely enough to cover the hospital’s annual uncompensated care, CCH’s Heeter said. Now, thanks to the downturn in coal and oil, those same three mills will deliver about $11.2 million in 2020.

That budget-altering challenge is still trending downward.

Some Wyoming hospitals reported losing up to 70% of revenue one month into the pandemic, Boley said. Approximately 1,539 people had lost their jobs in the healthcare and social services sectors in Wyoming from mid-March to the end of April and were receiving unemployment benefits, according to the Wyoming Department of Workforce Services. That doesn’t account for healthcare staff who moved out of the community after their spouses were laid off from coal and oil jobs. 

Like many hospitals across the nation, Campbell County Health is desperately trying to stem the loss of healthcare professionals by imposing pay cuts and furloughs before turning to layoffs.

“Things are only going to get worse,” Boley said in April. “If things don’t turn around quickly, I have some serious concerns about whether or not a lot of our hospitals will even survive this. And I’m not being dramatic — I’m being realistic when I take a look at the amount of cash they’re burning to try to stay open and trying to keep their communities protected. We’ve got some tough times ahead of us.” 

By mid-May, Wyoming hospitals and healthcare providers had received two injections of CARES Act relief funds totaling about $139 million, a lifeline that likely prevented one or more hospital closures — for now, Boley said. Uncompensated care is accelerating and hospitals are simply trying to emerge from the pandemic intact. 

Many Wyoming hospitals resumed non-emergency procedures after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services revised its COVID-19 guidelines on April 19. Central Appalachian hospitals resumed in late April and early May. However, hospitals everywhere are still limited in the number of non-emergency procedures they can take on due to continuing protective measures for COVID-19 — and many people continue to put off seeking care from fear they may be exposed to the virus. 

Reacting to a pandemic in a coal crisis

Congress included $100 billion for hospitals in the $2 trillion CARES Act, which has staunched some of the fiscal bleeding. But rural hospital leaders say the relief was just a bandage.

“There’s not enough money that Congress can print to underwrite the cost of all of this,” said Ballad Health CEO Alan Levine. “The faster we get our operations back up, the faster we get back to financial stability.”

Ballad Health is Southwest Virginia’s dominant hospital chain. The nonprofit, which also covers northeast Tennessee, formed through the merger of two previously competing nonprofit chains that were both losing millions of dollars. Virginia did not expand Medicaid until 2019, after two hospitals had closed. Tennessee, which still hasn’t expanded Medicaid, has seen 13 hospital closures since 2000.

Ballad received $38 million from the CARES Act, but “$38 million doesn’t make up for more than $100 million in terms of cash flow that we’ve lost … from where we were a year ago,” Levine said. Additionally, Ballad received a $200 million advance on Medicare that it must pay back. 

The hospital chain should manage through the fall, Levine said, but the future is still hazy because of uncertainty about how the pandemic will play out.

“Only 17% of our in-patient revenue is covered by commercial insurance, 60% Medicare and 15% is Medicaid,” Levine said. “If there’s a small reduction in the number of people covered by insurance, or an increase in the number of people who have high deductibles, all of that could have a major effect financially on the system. We’re watching all of that in terms of our cash flow.”

The closure of a clinic or hospital creates an economic ripple that has an outsized effect on rural places that already lack large pools of employers.

“For most rural communities, the hospital is one of the top three employers; usually the school district and hospital are one and two,” O’Connor said. “If you take that hospital away, not only are you losing individual jobs, but those are good-paying jobs — doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists and whatnot — good jobs with good benefits paying a lot into the tax base of a community.” 

Suppliers and other support businesses also take a hit, as well as restaurants and retail establishments that benefit from having doctors, nurses and other medical personnel as customers.

The problems afflicting coal country’s hospitals began well before the pandemic, and relief money from the CARES Act and other sources will, at best, keep them going only for the short-term. More comprehensive solutions remain elusive, especially given the political gridlock in Washington, D.C., and the limitations of state funding support.

Meanwhile, healthcare systems are bracing for more waves of coronavirus — whether as states begin to reopen, or when cold weather returns.

“I don’t think we’ve hit that tipping point yet so far as seeing these infections,” said Jenkins, of the West Virginia Rural Health Association. “We really don’t know how many people are sick, especially in these very rural communities that nobody is going to. I think the infection will really step up if people don’t social distance. When things open up, I think we’ll see a spike, but I think we’ll see a huge spike this fall.”

Coal country faces a healthcare crisis is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

Chelsea environmental justice advocates fight for a seat at the table for energy and industrial projects in their city.

As the community of Chelsea grapples with soaring rates of COVID-19 infection possibly tied to the area’s low air quality, locals are demanding a greater say in the pollution-generating projects that are developed in their city.

“Community members need to be listened to,” said Roseann Bongiovanni, executive director of GreenRoots, an environmental justice organization focused on Chelsea and surrounding communities. “We’re the local experts — we know exactly how we’re being impacted, we know that our neighborhoods are some of the least healthy in the state.”

Massachusetts has been one of the states with the most coronavirus infections: Only New York and New Jersey have had higher per capita rates of COVID-19 cases. Within the state, the towns and cities hardest hit have almost all been communities with higher-than-average numbers of minorities and immigrants, and average incomes well below state norms. 

State Attorney General Maura Healey last month put out a report documenting this connection and calling for policies that will make vulnerable communities healthier and more resilient in the face of future public health crises, from disease to climate change. 

“These health disparities are the predictable end point of decades of policy choices that incentivize economic, housing, and environmental injustice,” the report reads. “This must change. And our efforts to remedy environmental injustice must begin now.”

In Chelsea, where more than 7% of the population has tested positive for COVID-19, activists say this analysis tells a familiar story of environmental injustice. The numbers, they say, highlight an urgent need for state policies that both decrease the burning of fossil fuels and give the people living with this air pollution a stronger voice in the choices that affect their communities.

Massachusetts COVID-19 rates

At just 2.2 square miles, Chelsea is geographically the smallest city in Massachusetts. But the community’s 45,000 residents are packed into about one-third of this space, Bongiovanni said, with the rest of the area occupied by industrial and commercial developments. 

“Really, Chelsea is enveloped by industrial activity,” Bongiovanni said. “Residents of Chelsea have shouldered the burden for so many of the region’s benefits.”

On the western edge of the city, trailer trucks constantly pull in and out of the largest produce distribution terminal in the country. Just over the border into neighboring Everett, Exxon-Mobil operates a petroleum storage terminal. Busy state Route 1 runs on an overpass through Chelsea and just a mile to the south sits Boston’s Logan International Airport. 

The result is pollution levels that can often be seen and even tasted by residents. When Catherine Maas first moved to the city 13 years ago, she was shocked to discover that in some parts of the city she could feel soot on the back of her throat. 

“I thought, I wonder if my lungs can stand up to this,” she said. “I thought, nobody deserves this.”

It is not a coincidence, Bongiovanni said, that so much industrial development has occurred adjacent to marginalized populations such as those in Chelsea. Businesses come to such places because they know the residents there are less able to fight back, she said: They are busy working multiple jobs to make ends meet, they may have language barriers, and they rarely have the political connections residents of wealthier areas enjoy.  

GreenRoots has been working with state legislators to propose measures that would help counteract these forces. One environmental justice bill currently pending in the legislature would require businesses developing projects in or near an environmental justice neighborhood — an area with low median income, high minority populations, or many residents with low English proficiency — to engage more with the community from the very earliest stages of planning. The bill calls for information to be made available in the languages commonly spoken in the area, for translation services to be made available at public meetings, and for hearings to be held in accessible locations near public transportation. 

“It gives communities that have for far too long not had a seat at the table, a seat at the table,” said Rep. Adrian Madaro, who represents neighboring East Boston and introduced the legislation into the House. “It gives them more standing legally to fight back against environmental burdens.” 

The need for such laws has been made clear by the recent battle against an electric substation planned for East Boston, Bongiovanni said. While utility company Eversource claims the project is needed, opponents of the substation argue it would be vulnerable to flooding and would be located far too close to jet fuel storage tanks. 

Activists have been particularly troubled by what they see as a lack of outreach by Eversource. Meetings have been scheduled at inconvenient times and places, and translation services have not been made available, they said. The utility company says it has shared information about the plan with those affected, but GreenRoots members who have canvassed the area discovered few residents were aware of the plan, Bongiovanni said. 

Right now, she said, it’s up to activists to make sure the community knows about projects that could affect air quality or public health. The pending legislation, she said, would shift that burden more squarely onto businesses by strengthening the community engagement requirements.  

“It’s about having an enforcement tool to really try to hold these proponents accountable,” she said.

The bill is currently pending in the Ways and Means Committee, which is further along in the process than previous environmental justice proposals have made it. Legislation not specifically related to the coronavirus is not getting much attention at the moment, Madaro said, but he is optimistic that the strong connection between air pollution and COVID-19 infections will help move the bill forward soon.

In addition to these measures, the state should invest more money in helping communities create renewable energy projects that will give them cleaner, more reliable energy and help them better prepare for the impacts of climate change, said Maria Belen Power, the associate executive director at GreenRoots.

Right now, Chelsea is finishing up a feasibility study examining the possibility of building a municipally owned microgrid in the city. The project would use solar power and battery storage to ensure a supply of power to city hall, the police station, a medical clinic, and a public housing building occupied by seniors and disabled residents. 

Developments like the planned microgrid can reduce emissions to some degree, but they can also pave the way for future projects that will have a much broader effect, Power said. 

“If we’re able through a microgrid to reduce emissions and move toward renewable sources of energy, we can also start doing that in other sectors and have a much broader ripple effect,” she said. “We need a shift that comes from the very top that says we’re going to move toward a more renewable form of energy.”

Massachusetts city’s residents ‘need to be listened to’ on pollution concerns is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.

A study finds the region stands to gain the most health benefits from a transition to clean power.

More wind and solar generation will mean less lung and heart disease, and no region stands to benefit more on a per megawatt-hour basis than the Midwest.

A study released today in Environmental Research Letters attempts to localize potential health gains from adding wind or solar generation. For each region, it puts a dollar value on projected health benefits for each megawatt-hour of renewable generation that displaces fossil fuels.

The Upper Midwest and Great Lakes/Mid-Atlantic regions stand to gain the most, with up to $113 per megawatt hour in benefits, compared to about $28 in California.

“Those areas tend to have more natural gas and coal on the grid, and there’s also a lot of people living downwind,” said lead author Jonathan Buonocore, who heads the climate, energy and health team at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

The study shows “how both location and the type of renewable energy determine what the health and climate benefits are” from displacing fossil fuel generation, Buonocore said. “But nobody actually modeled what would happen if you were to install one of these things in a specific location with the grid we have today.”

The study looked at the contiguous United States using regions that had previously been defined by a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency model known as AVERT. The Great Lakes/Mid-Atlantic region in that model generally coincides with the PJM transmission region. When the research team ran its model, it found that the most savings in health benefits per megawatt-hour would come from that region and the Upper Midwest.

Location was a big driver of the results in terms of what types of fossil fuel generation would be replaced. In the Great Lakes and Mid-Atlantic, “solar and wind are able to displace about the same amount of coal,” Buonocore said. “But if you compare that to the Upper Midwest, wind there is capable of displacing more coal than solar.”

The study combined coal and natural gas generation to the extent that those resources would both be part of an areas’s existing generation mix. The analysis presumed that renewable energy would displace whichever generation source was “on the margin” from a cost perspective, Buonocore said.

The study looked at health benefits from reducing carbon dioxide to mitigate climate change, as well as benefits from avoiding emissions of noxious air pollutants. Those include fine particulate matter, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides.

Especially for the Great Lakes/Mid-Atlantic and Upper Midwest regions, the health benefits from cutting carbon dioxide were dwarfed by those that would come from cutting down on particulates, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Pollution increases the risks for respiratory disease, cardiovascular disease, stroke, preterm births, low birth weight and other adverse birth outcomes, Buonocore said. Some emerging evidence also links air pollution to certain neurocognitive disorders, such as Alzheimer’s disease and autism, he added.

“The regional health benefits of increased deployment of renewable energy were striking,” said Aparna Bole, an associate professor at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine and doctor at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital in Cleveland, who did not work on the study. “As a pediatrician practicing in Northeast Ohio, it doesn’t surprise me that the Great Lakes region stands to benefit so significantly in every clean energy scenario considered by the authors.” 

Air pollution killed approximately 30,000 people in the continguous United States in 2015, according to a separate report published this summer in PLOS Medicine. Air pollution also has significant effects on chronic diseases, such as asthma, high blood pressure and other problems. Air pollution is the fourth leading cause of death worldwide.

The new study’s benefit ranges are actually “underestimates of the total benefits,” said Frederica Perera, an environmental health expert at Columbia University, who also did not work on the study. 

The study does not include health benefits from reducing ozone, which would mean fewer cases of asthma. It also does not account for the health costs of morbidity. That’s the burden of having to live with a chronic disease short of death. 

Likewise, although the study considered fugitive methane, it did not account for all the costs of extracting fossil fuels, such as pollution related to coal mining.

Nonetheless, Perera said, the study was fairly thorough in considering 284 different scenarios and in its review of a wider range of health impacts beyond the social costs of carbon. “This was a very important first step, I think, in looking at these different scenarios for renewables,” she said. 

An Oct. 21 report from the National Bureau of Economic Research estimated that a 5.5% increase in average annual U.S. emissions of fine particulate matter between 2016 and 2018 caused an additional 9,700 premature deaths last year. “At conventional valuations, these deaths represent damages of $89 billion” in 2016 dollars, wrote study authors Karen Clay and Nicholas Muller at Carnegie Mellon University.

The Oct. 21 paper showed that in addition to concerns about climate change, “there’s also still quite substantial health impacts due to air pollution,” Buonocore said. “And this work here is showing how you can deploy renewable energy to best mitigate both climate change and that health burden of air pollution.”

Current law calls for the Environmental Protection Agency to consider all costs and benefits of proposed rules as part of the rulemaking process. That includes health benefits that may occur as a result of a rule.

Last December, however, the EPA proposed a major change in the analysis for a rule limiting mercury and other air toxics from power plants. The revision would exclude the accompanying benefits from eliminating particulate matter and other pollutants. That change would then lead to an agency conclusion that the rule wasn’t necessary and appropriate, although the agency said it would leave the rule in place. EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler is a former lobbyist for coal giant Murray Energy, which had strongly opposed the rule.

If finalized and extended to other rulemaking, the Trump administration’s proposal would consider indirect costs of rulemaking, but not any indirect benefits. Critics have said the distinction would be arbitrary and unreasonable.

“We want as full a picture as possible of the impacts and the benefits of reducing air pollution from fossil fuel burning,” Perera said, noting that fossil fuels are responsible for perhaps the lion’s share of toxic air pollution in the United States. “So, it’s extremely important to consider the benefits both of reducing carbon emissions … and also reducing the toxic air pollutants.”

And when it comes to deploying renewable energy, “including health and incorporating location are both really important to making sure that we do the best we can to both mitigate carbon emissions and also improve health in the process,” Buonocore said.

“It’s critical that the health benefits of cleaner air be included in considering the return on investment in renewable energy,” Bole said. “For that reason, the analyses in this work should help to inform energy policymaking.”

More renewables will mean less asthma and heart disease in the Midwest is an article from Energy News Network, a nonprofit news service covering the clean energy transition. If you would like to support us please make a donation.