Cheap and abundant coal fuelled the industrialization of Europe, North America and Asia¹. However, the price tag on coal has never reflected the external cost to society; coal combustion produces more than a third of today’s global CO₂ emissions and is a major contributor to local adverse effects on the environment and public health, such as biodiversity loss and respiratory diseases. Here, we show that phasing out coal yields substantial local environmental and health benefits that outweigh the direct policy costs due to shortening of the energy supply. Phasing out coal is thus a no-regret strategy for most world regions, even when only accounting for domestic effects and neglecting the global benefits from slowing climate change. Our results suggest that these domestic effects potentially eliminate much of the free-rider problem caused by the discrepancy between the national burden of decarbonization costs and the internationally shared benefits of climate change impact mitigation. This, combined with the profound effect of closing around half of the global CO₂ emissions gap towards the 2 °C target, makes coal phase-out policies attractive candidates for the iterative strengthening of the nationally determined contributions pledged by the countries under the Paris Agreement.

廉价而丰富的煤炭推动了欧洲，北美和亚洲的工业化¹。但是，煤炭的价格标签从未反映出社会的外部成本。煤炭燃烧产生了当今全球CO ₂的三分之一以上排放，是造成当地对环境和公共卫生不利影响的主要因素，例如生物多样性的丧失和呼吸系统疾病。在这里，我们表明，由于能源供应的缩短，逐步淘汰煤炭将给当地带来巨大的环境和健康益处，超过直接政策成本。因此，即使仅考虑到国内影响并忽略了气候变化减缓带来的全球利益，逐步淘汰煤炭对大多数世界地区而言都是绝不后悔的战略。我们的结果表明，这些国内影响潜在地消除了由国家脱碳成本负担与减轻气候变化影响的国际共享利益之间的差异所引起的许多搭便车问题。加上关闭全球二氧化碳约一半的深远影响朝着2°C的目标排放_2的差距，使得逐步淘汰煤炭的政策成为逐步加强各国根据《巴黎协定》承诺的国家确定的捐款的有吸引力的候选人。