Restarting Revolution Wind is good for health, climate

Investing in clean sources of electricity helps address climate change, both because of its direct effects, and because it helps ensure that increased electrification of vehicles and buildings does not increase our reliance on fossil fuels for electricity.

Building renewable energy also leads to local and regional health benefits in the near term by reducing the air pollution that leads to increased asthma, heart attacks, respiratory disease, and early death throughout the region. These benefits are quantifiable and substantial. For example, our research found that a 1000 megawatt wind farm off the coast of Maryland would produce about $240 million in health and climate benefits yearly. While Revolution Wind is slightly smaller, at 704 megawatts, it would still produce billions of dollars in health and climate benefits for the region over the lifetime of the wind farm.

This attempt to stall the buildout of offshore wind is just one example of many in which this administration sacrifices health, well-being, and our energy bills, and prioritizes profits for the fossil fuel industry.

On Sept. 29, the Trump administration announced a series of moves to bolster and subsidize the coal industry to try to make it more economically competitive. Earlier this summer, they proposed to roll back revisions to the Mercury and Air Toxics Rule in spite of the fact that their own analysis shows that it saves the coal industry only about $120 million per year on average, and that our electricity bills don’t go down. However, we get a 20 percent increase in the amount of mercury emitted, along with increases in greenhouse gas emissions, and other air pollutants. Given the links between these pollutants and neurological problems in children, especially the link between mercury and childhood brain development, this is a seeming contradiction with the goals “MAHA Report” to address concerns about toxic chemicals and their effects on brain development.

These efforts go beyond the power sector, including attempts to roll back greenhouse gas emissions standards on vehicles. By their own analysis, the repeal of vehicle greenhouse gas standards will lead to $8 billion per year in health damages due to increased air pollution, while only saving industry $1.2 billion per year. These health damages leave out impacts on health from multiple air pollutants, damages to ecosystems and agriculture, and decreased visibility.

Even for people who are not worried about public health, their own analysis shows that repealing greenhouse gas standards will increase electricity and natural gas costs for the public until at least 2030. They also fail to include the impacts on climate change related to the greenhouse gas standards themselves, since President Trump proclaimed in an executive order that impacts from greenhouse gas emissions can no longer be counted in policy analyses. But just because you ignore something does not mean it isn’t there.

For decades, we have been incredibly successful in reducing the health burdens of electricity generation while maintaining affordability and system performance. The number of excess deaths in the USUnited States attributable to sulfur dioxide emissions from power plants, which mostly come from coal burning, decreased from more than 40,000 in the year 2000 to 1,600 in 2020, with the cost of electricity to consumers going down when adjusted for inflation. Dismantling this hard-fought success won’t make us healthier or wealthier. The Trump administration should put health and welfare ahead of profits for the fossil fuel industry, and stop getting in the way of the transition to a healthier energy system.

Jonathan Levy is a professor and chair of the Department of Environmental Health at the Boston University School of Public Health, where his research centers on urban environmental exposure and health risk modeling. Jonathan Buonocore is an assistant professor of environmental health at the Boston University School of Public Health, whose research interests are in evaluating policy choices in energy, transportation, agricultural practices, and climate change mitigation and adaptation.