Development and Demonstration of the Environmental Policy Simulation Tool for Electrical Grid Interventions (Epstein), Version 2.0

Renewable energy and energy efficiency (EE/RE) can have benefits to both climate and public health by reducing emissions of both greenhouse gases (GHGs) like carbon dioxide (CO2), and air pollutants (APs), including sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and fine particulate matter. Benefits of EE/RE have been modeled previously, but scalability can be limited by computational resources necessary to run electrical grid and atmospheric dispersion models. Here, we present and demonstrate EPSTEIN 2.0, a platform that can rapidly assess the health and climate benefits of EE/RE across 10 electrical grid regions in the Continental United States. EPSTEIN 2.0 consists of a rapid electrical grid model that simulates changes in power plant operation and emissions in response to new generation sources or decreased demand from EE/RE measures on that grid. The estimated AP reductions are then fed into a model that estimates the health benefits in monetary terms, using a statistical model for air pollution transport, populat...