Exhaust rising from the Mitchell Power Station, a coal-fired power plant near Pittsburgh that was shuttered in 2013. The EPA’s Clean Power Plan could result in more such retirements. (Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

President Barack Obama’s assertion last month that climate change will bring more asthma and worse allergies drew a skeptical response in some quarters, but it turns out the president’s signature climate solution – the Clean Power Plan – could come with significant health “co-benefits.”

That’s the conclusion of a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change that modeled a trio of scenarios for tackling carbon emissions.

“Scenario 2 – which is the most similar of our three scenarios to the Clean Power Plan proposal of the EPA in terms of stringency, policy structure and anticipated changes in power generation – results in the greatest estimated emissions reductions, air quality improvements and health co-benefits. Its top performance is due to lower total fossil fuel generation, greater substitution of natural gas for coal and more new demand-side energy efficiency.” – from the study, “US Power Plant Carbon Standards and Clean Air and Health Co-Benefits”

Researchers, led by Charles Driscoll at Syracuse University, calculated that the EPA-like plan would prevent “an expected 3,500 premature deaths in the US every year, with a range of 780 to 6,100.”