PuSH - Publication Server of Helmholtz Zentrum München: Strategies to accelerate US coal power phase-out using contextual retirement vulnerabilities.

Information

Clues to quality of journals

Open Access Policy of Helmholtz Association 2016

CC Licencences

Publication Metrics

Navigation

Home

Deutsch

Research

Advanced Search

Browse by ...

... HMGU-Authors/Consortia

... Organizational Structure

... Journal

... Publication Type

... Research Data

... Arbeitsgruppen

... Publication Year

Publication overview

Statistics

Statistics (last 5 years)

OA Publications

Publish

Submit Publication

Import publication from...

...EVA

Report missing publication

Highlights

Support & Contact

Contact persons

Help

Data protection

Helmholtz Open Science

JANE Journal Estimator

SHERPA/RoMEO

DOAJ

Export:

Text

Endnote (RIS) BIB

BibTeX

Gathrid, S.* ; Wayland, J.D. ; Wayland, S.* ; Deshmukh, R.* ; Wu, G.C.*

Strategies to accelerate US coal power phase-out using contextual retirement vulnerabilities.

Nat. Energy 10, 1274-1288 (2025)

Publ. Version/Full Text

Research data

DOI

Open Access Green as soon as Postprint is submitted to ZB.

Abstract
Metrics
Extra information

Strategically planning the phase-out of coal power is critical to achieve climate targets, yet current approaches often fail to account for the context-specific barriers and vulnerabilities to retirement. Here we introduce a framework that combines graph theory and topological data analysis to classify the US coal fleet into eight distinct groups based on technical, economic, environmental and socio-political characteristics. We calculate each non-retiring coal plant’s ‘contextual retirement vulnerability’ score, a metric developed to quantify susceptibility to retirement drivers using the graph-based distance to a coal plant with an announced early retirement. Separately, we identify ‘retirement archetypes’ that explain the key factors driving announced retirements within each group, which are used to inform group-specific strategies for accelerating retirements. Our findings reveal the diverse strategies that are required to accelerate the phase-out of remaining coal plants, including regulatory compliance, public health campaigns and economic incentives.

Impact Factor

Scopus SNIP

Altmetric

60.100

7.320