National present burden — the 136 active US coal power plants

① Count — attributable deaths per year

② Rate — deaths per 100k people per year

Honesty ledger — assumptions & limits

• Present burden, not a repeal forecast:

• y0 (baseline mortality rate):

• All-ages population convention: National 25+-consistent correction factor ≈ — this is why the headline is shown as a band (25+-adjusted, more defensible → as-specified, upper-bound-of-upper-bound).

• GEMM is an upper-bound CRF:

• Single-layer/ground-level SR:

• Non-US remainder:

• GEMM risk threshold (the hatched states):

• Climate TRACE input-layer caveats:

• Out-of-state metric:

• VSL is illustrative: VSL = (2023 USD, EPA-anchored central value) — prefer thinking in a range around the central figure, never “cost of deaths” or “lives worth.”

• Cell mapping:

• Source markers are grid cells, never named plants: the coral markers show aggregated source grid cells sized by SO₂+NOx tonnes. Individual coal plants are not named by design on this page; the aggregation to grid cell and state is the deliberate ceiling.

• No demographic or environmental-justice view — and why: there is zero demographic data on this box, so nothing on this page speaks to who bears the burden by race, income or vulnerability. Building that honestly would need (a) US Census/ACS race-and-income tables, (b) EPA EJScreen indicators, (c) CDC/ATSDR Social Vulnerability Index, and (d) a defensible spatial join from this variable-resolution receptor grid down to tract or block-group level — an area- or population-weighted (dasymetric) transfer, not a naive overlay. It would also need its own caveats: per-state y0 cannot resolve within-state mortality differences, so a naive version would understate real disparity, and attributing a group-level value to individuals is an ecological fallacy. Not attempted here rather than approximated.

More about this number

What this counterfactual is counting

If the 136 operating US coal plants' 2025 SO₂+NOx emissions were removed and the reduction sustained, we estimate this many fewer steady-state annual PM2.5 deaths. Present burden — coal running TODAY, real v02 InMAP modeling, no policy “if.” Assumptions in ⓘ Methods ↗ ⚠ The NO_x side of that total (687,000 t/yr, Climate TRACE 2025) runs about 41% above the publicly reported coal-fleet NO_x figure of 486,000 t/yr; SO₂ is within 4.8%. Sulfate formed from SO₂ dominates the modelled health effect, so this estimate is not sensitive to the NO_x gap.

The band, and what it does not span

Present burden · US receptors · steady-state annual

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Why the two maps disagree

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Map ① is a count: totals, which track where people live as much as where the modeled dose is worst.

Map ② is a rate. Population-independent risk. Its denominator is whole-cell attributed — see the population-base note in ⓘ.

Where the deaths land outside the US

Where the modeled deaths land — the US figure above, in context

How big the fleet is

What a §111 repeal would add on top

SCENARIO — §111 repeal delta

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