Impacts of Future Electricity Generation on Greenhouse Gases and Air Quality in the Rocky Mountain Region

This study shows that emissions from the future scenarios for the Rocky Mountain region vary in space and time, with important implications for local air quality. In scenarios with expensive natural gas or GHG fees to promote renewable energy, wind energy plays a key role in emissions reductions in the fall and spring seasons when the wind resources are abundant and competitive to fossil fuels. The greenhouse gas fees scenario reduces annual emissions of CO2, SO2, and NOx by around 40% on an annual basis. However, emissions in the summer do not change as much between scenarios mainly because of high electricity demand and reduced wind energy resources. The impacts of emissions due to the electricity generation scenarios for summertime ozone can be significant in areas near coal power plants depending on the day, but overall changes are smaller in the summer compared to other seasons.