Financing a Provincial Coal Transition in China

How Outcome-Linked Prevention Shares Could Finance Coal Retirement Through Avoided Health, Grid, Fiscal and Climate Losses

This is an illustrative financial architecture rather than a description of an announced transaction. Implementation would require plant-level engineering, power-system modelling, worker consultation, environmental review, regulatory approval and legal analysis under Chinese law.

Executive Summary

Shanxi Province sits at the center of China’s coal economy. Coal mining supports industrial output, employment, provincial revenue, electricity production and energy exports to other regions. This concentration makes an unmanaged transition financially dangerous. Rapid closures could impair electricity reliability, strand productive assets, weaken local government revenue and destabilize coal-dependent communities. Continued dependence creates a different set of liabilities through air pollution, greenhouse-gas emissions, mine degradation, transition exposure and the risk of more abrupt closures later.

The financing problem is not simply how to pay owners to retire coal assets. It is how to replace the economic functions those assets currently perform while recognizing the losses that a managed transition prevents.

A carefully sequenced transition could create value through:

• Lower air-pollution mortality and illness
• Lower healthcare and public-health costs
• Higher labor productivity
• Reduced exposure to future carbon costs
• Lower risk of disorderly asset closures
• Preserved electricity-system reliability
• Reduced mine-methane emissions
• Lower mine-remediation and land-restoration liabilities
• More predictable worker and community adjustment
• Increased renewable-energy utilization
• Reduced fiscal concentration in coal
• Avoided climate damages within China and internationally

Those benefits accrue to different institutions. Health authorities experience one category of value, grid operators another, provincial governments another, employers another and the national government yet another. No single beneficiary captures enough of the total value to finance the entire transition.

Arctica Advisory proposes an illustrative Shanxi Coal Transition and Prevention Vehicle that would acquire or contract for the managed retirement and repurposing of a defined portfolio of older coal mines and generating units. The vehicle would simultaneously finance replacement generation, storage, grid services, mine closure, environmental remediation and worker transition.

Investors would supply capital through Outcome-Linked Prevention Shares. Distributions would be supported by contracts tied to verified emissions reductions, grid performance, air-quality improvements, worker outcomes and fiscal-transition milestones. Existing and future carbon-pricing revenues could supplement the payment stack, but the project would not depend on a future global carbon price to reach financial close.

Why Shanxi

Shanxi provides an unusually clear example of the institutional challenges surrounding coal transition. The province’s economy is deeply connected to coal extraction, power generation and coal-intensive manufacturing. According to a UNDP analysis, coal accounted for approximately 42 percent of Shanxi’s industrial revenue, 52 percent of industrial assets and 73 percent of industrial taxes in 2022. Resource taxes represented approximately 22 percent of government income, more than in any other Chinese province covered by the study. UNDP, Towards a Just Transition

This dependence makes a simple plant-retirement strategy inadequate. Closing mines and generating units without replacing electricity, employment and public revenue would transfer transition risk from the climate system onto workers, municipalities, state-owned enterprises and the provincial balance sheet.

At the same time, Shanxi has substantial potential to develop alternative energy infrastructure. Datong, one of the province’s major coal-producing cities, reported approximately 8.75 gigawatts of new and renewable generating capacity in 2023, representing more than half of its installed capacity. State Council of China

The case study would therefore focus on a managed portfolio in northern Shanxi, potentially centered on Datong and neighboring coal-producing areas. This provides a defined regional electricity, mining, employment and public-health perimeter while building on an emerging renewable-energy base.

The Structural Problem

Coal assets perform multiple functions simultaneously. They produce electricity and fuel, support employment, generate tax revenue, provide local economic activity and contribute to national energy security. Their continued operation also produces greenhouse-gas emissions, conventional air pollution, mine methane, water impacts and long-term closure liabilities.

Conventional transition finance tends to isolate one part of this system. Renewable-energy finance pays for replacement generation. Public budgets fund worker programs. Coal companies remain responsible for closure and remediation. Health authorities absorb pollution-related illness. Provincial governments manage revenue shocks, while grid operators manage the reliability consequences of changing generation.

This fragmentation leaves each institution financing only the transition costs that appear within its formal mandate. It also prevents the project from aggregating the much larger set of losses that a coordinated transition could avoid.

The financial architecture must therefore answer four questions:

1. Which coal assets should retire, repurpose or remain available temporarily for system security?
2. What replacement infrastructure must be operational before output is withdrawn?
3. Which institutions receive measurable value from the transition?
4. How can those benefits become enforceable payments rather than merely estimated social value?

The Defined Intervention

The project would not seek the immediate retirement of Shanxi’s entire coal sector. It would cover a specifically identified portfolio of older, inefficient or high-emitting mines and generating units whose transition can occur without compromising national energy security.

The financed intervention could include:

• Contractual early retirement of selected coal-generating units
• Conversion of suitable units to limited reserve, synchronous-condenser or other grid-support functions
• Closure of uneconomic or high-risk mines
• Capture or destruction of coal-mine methane during the closure period
• Renewable generation and storage built before coal output is withdrawn
• Transmission and distribution upgrades
• Demand-response and virtual-power-plant capacity
• Grid-forming inverters and other stability equipment
• Mine-site remediation and groundwater management
• Repurposing of industrial land for clean-energy or manufacturing uses
• Worker income protection, retraining and placement
• Fiscal-transition support for highly exposed municipalities
• Long-term environmental and methane monitoring

Each coal asset would receive a facility-specific transition plan. Retirement dates would be conditional on replacement capacity, grid-service availability, worker protections and environmental obligations rather than determined by an arbitrary portfolio-wide deadline.

Counterfactual Value Creation

The project would create different categories of value for different beneficiaries.

Beneficiary	Prevention value created	Potential payment mechanism
Provincial government	Lower public-health, remediation and disorderly-transition exposure	Provincial outcome-purchase agreement
Central government	Progress toward climate, air-quality and industrial-transition objectives	National transition payment or guarantee
Health authorities	Lower pollution-related illness and treatment demand	Air-quality outcome payment
Employers	Higher labor productivity and fewer pollution-related absences	Regional clean-air contribution
Grid operators	Replacement capacity, flexibility and improved renewable integration	Capacity and ancillary-service contracts
Electricity consumers	Reduced probability of shortage and price volatility	Regulated system-benefit payment
Coal-plant owners	Reduced stranded-asset, closure and future compliance exposure	Transition and asset-repurposing agreement
Mine operators	Defined closure funding and reduced long-term liability	Remediation performance contract
Workers	Income continuity, retraining and alternative employment	Worker-transition trust
Municipal governments	More predictable revenue adjustment and economic diversification	Fiscal-transition agreement
Industrial developers	Remediated land and infrastructure	Lease, concession or redevelopment payment
China’s carbon market	Verified emissions reductions or lower compliance needs	Allowance or recognized-credit revenue
International climate institutions	Reduced global greenhouse-gas accumulation	Climate outcome-purchase agreement
Investors	Contractual distributions from verified prevention outcomes	Outcome-Linked Prevention Shares

Not every benefit would generate a directly assignable cash flow. The transaction would therefore combine commercial revenues with public outcome payments, guarantees and concessional capital.

The Shanxi Coal Transition and Prevention Vehicle

A domestic special-purpose vehicle would be established to finance and coordinate the portfolio. Its shareholders or governing participants could include provincial entities, participating state-owned enterprises, policy-oriented financial institutions and approved private investors.

The vehicle would enter into:

• Coal-unit retirement and repurposing agreements
• Mine-closure and remediation agreements
• Renewable-energy and storage construction contracts
• Grid-capacity and ancillary-service agreements
• Worker-transition and community-benefit agreements
• Public-health outcome-purchase agreements
• Carbon-value participation agreements
• Independent measurement and verification contracts
• Reserve-account and payment-security arrangements

The vehicle would not obtain unrestricted control over strategically important energy assets. Its rights would be limited to the contracted transition, performance and payment arrangements. Dispatch decisions, energy-security policy, labor regulation and environmental enforcement would remain with the appropriate Chinese authorities.

The structure would use renminbi-denominated project accounts wherever possible, reducing foreign-exchange risk. International capital could participate only through structures permitted under Chinese financial and investment regulations.

Asset Selection

Coal retirement produces prevention value only when the affected generation or industrial output is genuinely displaced rather than transferred to another plant. Asset selection would therefore be based on system-wide modelling.

Priority candidates could include units with:

• High emissions per unit of generation
• Poor heat rates or low operating efficiency
• High local air-pollution exposure
• Significant future maintenance requirements
• Limited value for system adequacy
• Feasible replacement capacity
• Manageable worker-transition requirements
• Significant mine-methane or remediation opportunities
• Proximity to transmission and redevelopment infrastructure

Newer units that remain necessary for reliability might be converted to lower-utilization reserve operation before retirement. Payments would compensate the owner for providing verifiable capacity or stability services rather than rewarding continued high-volume coal generation.

This avoids treating all coal capacity as interchangeable. A unit that is inefficient as an energy producer may still have temporary value for reserves, voltage support, inertia or local heat supply. The transition plan would have to replace those functions explicitly.

Outcome-Linked Prevention Shares

The vehicle would issue Outcome-Linked Prevention Shares to investors providing long-duration, risk-bearing capital. Each share would represent a proportional contractual claim on the vehicle’s distributable prevention payments.

Distributions would depend on a portfolio performance score rather than simply the passage of time. The score could include:

• Verified net greenhouse-gas reductions
• Reduction in sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate emissions
• Coal-mine methane captured or destroyed
• Replacement clean generation delivered
• Grid reliability and adequacy
• Mine remediation and land restoration
• Worker placement and income outcomes
• Municipal fiscal-diversification milestones
• Compliance with retirement schedules
• Absence of material emissions leakage

The shares could be transferable among approved investors through a controlled registry. If a financial institution’s mandate or exposure changed, it could sell its interest without requiring the project to refinance the entire portfolio.

Transfers would not affect the underlying retirement obligations. A coal-unit owner could not reverse an executed retirement simply because prevention shares changed hands. Similarly, investors would receive no right to reopen mines, direct electricity dispatch or weaken environmental standards.

Share classes

The vehicle could issue several classes reflecting different risk tolerances:

Share class	Risk and payment characteristics
Senior Prevention Shares	Lower return, priority distributions from contracted grid and public payments
Performance Prevention Shares	Higher exposure to air-quality, emissions and remediation outcomes
Community Transition Shares	Subordinated or capped-return capital supporting worker and municipal programs
Carbon Participation Shares	Rights limited to qualifying carbon-pricing and emissions-reduction revenue

Separating the carbon participation right would prevent uncertainty about future greenhouse-gas pricing from destabilizing the more predictable infrastructure and public-outcome payment layers.

Measuring the Transition

The project would require a locked, independently reviewed baseline for every participating asset. The baseline could not assume that a coal plant would operate indefinitely if existing law, economics or policy already indicated retirement.

For each asset, the credited emissions reduction would be:$$E{R}_{i,t}=E_{i,t}^{baseline}-E_{i,t}^{project}-L_{i,t}$$

where:

• $E_{i,t}^{baseline}$ is the emissions expected under the approved baseline;
• $E_{i,t}^{project}$ is the remaining emissions after transition; and
• $L_{i,t}$​ represents leakage, including replacement coal generation elsewhere.

No credit would be issued for production declines caused solely by an economic downturn, plant outage or transfer of generation to another coal facility.

The overall performance score could be expressed as:$$Q_t=w_E{E}_t+w_A{A}_t+w_G{G}_t+w_R{R}_t+w_W{W}_t+w_F{F}_t$$

where:

• $E_t$ measures net emissions reductions;
• $A_t$​ measures air-quality performance;
• $G_t$ measures grid reliability;
• $R_t$ measures remediation;
• $W_t$​ measures worker outcomes;
• $F_t$ measures fiscal-transition progress; and
• the $w$ terms are pre-agreed weights.

Different payment agreements could use different components of the score. Grid operators would not pay based on worker placement, while public transition funds would not be responsible for electricity-market outcomes outside their control.

Layer 1: Public-Health and Air-Quality Value

Coal combustion is a major source of particulate pollution, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides. Reducing emissions can lower respiratory and cardiovascular illness, premature mortality, work absences and pressure on public-health systems.

The World Bank has estimated that air pollution contributes to approximately 1.5 million deaths annually in China and direct economic losses of approximately 0.5 percent of GDP. These figures are national estimates rather than a valuation of the Shanxi portfolio, but they demonstrate the potential magnitude of the benefit. World Bank China Country Climate and Development Report

A provincial outcome-purchase agreement could pay the vehicle for verified reductions in emissions and population-weighted pollution exposure. Payments should not be based solely on ambient pollution readings because weather, transportation, industry and pollution transported from other regions also affect air quality.

The measurement framework would combine:

• Continuous emissions-monitoring data
• Fuel consumption and plant-output data
• Atmospheric dispersion modelling
• Population exposure estimates
• Independent ambient-air monitoring
• Adjustments for weather and non-project pollution sources

Public-health value would justify the government’s payment ceiling. It would not be treated as a perfectly observable cash saving in the provincial health budget.

Layer 2: Grid Reliability and Renewable Integration

Coal units cannot be retired responsibly unless their energy, capacity and stability functions are replaced. The project would therefore link retirement payments to the commissioning of renewable generation, storage, demand response, transmission and grid-support technologies.

Grid operators could enter contracts for:

• Firm capacity
• Frequency response
• Voltage support
• Operating reserves
• Black-start capability
• Demand flexibility
• Reduced renewable curtailment
• Transmission availability

A coal unit could be repurposed to provide limited non-generation grid services where technically and economically appropriate. Its payment would then depend on availability for those services and compliance with a declining emissions limit.

The grid layer is essential because avoided climate and health losses cannot justify a transition that increases electricity shortages. A minimum system-adequacy condition would apply before emissions-linked distributions were released.

Layer 3: Avoided Disorderly-Transition Loss

A delayed transition can produce abrupt closures once policy, technology or carbon prices change. That can strand assets, concentrate unemployment, reduce local revenue and shift remediation liabilities onto governments.

The proposed vehicle would reduce these losses by establishing:

• Predetermined retirement schedules
• Negotiated compensation for qualifying unrecovered investment
• Dedicated remediation reserves
• Worker-transition funding before closure
• Municipal fiscal-adjustment plans
• Alternative land-use and industrial-development agreements
• Contingent acceleration if carbon or environmental policy tightens

The counterfactual value is not the preservation of coal-company profits. It is the reduction in secondary losses created when closure occurs without preparation.

Provincial and national institutions could make outcome payments when transition milestones are achieved, including worker placement, remediation completion and municipal-revenue diversification.

Layer 4: Worker and Community Transition

Worker protections would be part of the financed asset rather than a separate social program added after the transaction.

Eligible uses of capital could include:

• Time-limited income support
• Pension and benefit protection
• Accredited retraining
• Relocation assistance where voluntarily chosen
• Wage insurance for workers entering lower-paid sectors
• Local-business development
• Remediation employment
• Clean-energy and advanced-manufacturing apprenticeships
• Support for municipalities losing coal-related revenue

Outcome payments would be tied to measures such as employment retention, post-transition earnings, training completion and job duration. Simply enrolling workers in training would not qualify as a successful outcome.

No retirement payment would be released if participating companies failed to fund required worker protections or attempted to shift unfunded pension and remediation obligations onto the vehicle.

Layer 5: Mine Methane and Environmental Remediation

Coal-mine methane is both a safety risk and a potent greenhouse gas. Mine closure can continue releasing methane if wells, shafts and surrounding formations are not properly managed.

The vehicle could finance:

• Pre-closure methane drainage
• Methane capture and use
• Oxidation or destruction where utilization is not feasible
• Post-closure monitoring
• Groundwater protection
• Subsidence remediation
• Waste-pile stabilization
• Contaminated-land restoration

Payments would depend on metered methane capture or destruction and verified environmental outcomes. Methane reductions would be recorded separately from carbon-dioxide reductions at coal-generating units.

Remediated sites could generate additional revenue through renewable-energy development, industrial leases or sale of approved redevelopment rights. These would be conventional project revenues rather than avoided-loss payments.

Layer 6: Fiscal Transition

Coal dependence creates concentrated provincial and municipal revenue exposure. Shanxi cannot reduce that dependence safely if local governments lose tax revenue faster than alternative economic activity develops.

A fiscal-transition agreement could provide temporary, declining payments to highly exposed municipalities. Payments would be conditional on measurable diversification, such as:

• Growth in non-coal tax revenue
• Redevelopment of former industrial sites
• New employment outside coal extraction
• Reduced reliance on resource taxes
• Improved collection of land, service or industrial revenue
• Compliance with borrowing and fiscal-transparency requirements

The purpose would be to prevent a coal transition from causing local governments to postpone infrastructure, healthcare or worker services. Payments would decline as the local revenue base becomes more diversified.

Existing Chinese Carbon-Market Value

China launched its national emissions-trading system for the power sector in 2021. Steel, cement and aluminum were added in 2025, and the expanded system now covers more than 60 percent of national carbon-dioxide emissions. China Ministry of Ecology and Environment

The case study should not assume that retiring a coal plant automatically produces saleable allowances. China’s current power-sector system largely uses output-based allocation. A plant that stops generating may cease receiving allowances rather than creating a surplus that the vehicle can sell.

Existing carbon value could nevertheless arise through:

• Reduced allowance-purchase requirements before retirement
• Sale of legally recognized surplus allowances
• Eligible mine-methane reduction credits
• Recognized voluntary emission-reduction projects
• Regulatory programs that reward verified early retirement
• Allowance cancellation purchased by public or philanthropic outcome buyers

Any carbon-market revenue included at financial close would have to be supported by existing law and a legally recognized methodology. Speculative future carbon value would be excluded from the base case.

Future Global Greenhouse-Gas Pricing

The contracts would include a Global Greenhouse-Gas Price and Carbon-Value Adjustment Clause. This would allow the transaction to participate in a future international carbon price without depending upon that price for initial viability.

Qualifying pricing event

A qualifying event would occur if:

• China links its emissions-trading system to an international market;
• An international carbon-price floor becomes applicable to covered facilities;
• China moves from primarily intensity-based allocation toward an absolute emissions cap;
• Allowances become auctioned or materially more expensive;
• Verified coal-retirement reductions become eligible for compliance crediting;
• An international climate institution purchases or cancels recognized reductions; or
• A greenhouse-gas levy creates revenue legally available for coal-transition finance.

The adoption of a global price would not by itself create project revenue. The vehicle would participate only where the applicable law recognizes the reduction, assigns a financial benefit or makes pricing proceeds available to the transaction.

Carbon-value formula

Qualifying carbon value could be calculated as:$$C{V}_t=P_t^{GHG}\times E{R}_t^{eligible}-C{C}_t-D{C}_t$$

where:

• $P_t^{GHG}$ is the applicable greenhouse-gas price;
• $E{R}_t^{eligible}$ is the portion of verified net reductions legally recognized by the pricing system;
• $C{C}_t$ represents compliance and transaction costs; and
• $D{C}_t$ represents deductions necessary to prevent double counting.

The agreements would specify in advance how the net value is shared among the vehicle, coal-asset owners, investors, workers and public institutions.

Regulatory substitution

If a future carbon-pricing mechanism directly pays for emissions reductions already supported by a public outcome-purchase agreement, the new revenue could substitute for part of the public payment. The underlying payment right would remain intact, but the identity of the payer could change.

This protects public budgets while maintaining investor certainty. It also prevents the project from being paid twice for the same carbon outcome.

Allowance cancellation

If retirement simply frees allowances that other emitters can use, the climate benefit may be reduced by a market-wide “waterbed effect.” The vehicle would therefore seek one of the following:

• Cancellation of the corresponding allowances
• A reduction in a participating entity’s future allocation
• Adjustment of the applicable sectoral cap
• A government certification that the reductions are additional to the market baseline
• A conservative deduction for any emissions transferred elsewhere

Outcome-Linked Prevention Shares would receive carbon distributions only after environmental integrity had been demonstrated.

Carbon-revenue waterfall

Net additional carbon-pricing proceeds would be allocated in the following order:

1. Measurement, reporting and verification costs
2. Carbon-market compliance and allowance cancellation
3. Mine-methane and environmental monitoring
4. Worker and community-transition reserves
5. Replacement of qualifying public outcome payments
6. Capped distributions to Carbon Participation Shares
7. Additional coal-retirement and clean-energy investment

The investor participation cap would prevent a future policy change from transferring an unlimited public windfall to existing shareholders.

The Contracted Payment Stack

Annual payments to the vehicle could be represented as:$$P_t=H_t+G_t+T_t+M_t+F_t+C_t+R_t$$

where:

• $H_t$ represents public-health and air-quality payments;
• $G_t$ represents grid-capacity and reliability payments;
• $T_t$ represents transition and asset-retirement payments;
• $M_t$ represents methane and remediation payments;
• $F_t$ represents fiscal and worker-transition outcome payments;
• $C_t$ represents existing or future carbon value; and
• $R_t$​ represents redevelopment and conventional project revenue.

The economic value of avoided losses would establish the maximum defensible contribution from each beneficiary. Executed contracts, rather than modelled benefits alone, would provide the cash flow supporting investors.

The Capital Structure

The project would require a blended structure because worker protection, air quality and orderly fiscal adjustment do not naturally produce private revenue.

Capital layer	Function
Provincial and national transition capital	Funds policy-driven and public-benefit components
First-loss public or climate capital	Absorbs early policy, construction and performance risk
Policy-bank and concessional debt	Finances replacement infrastructure and remediation
Senior Prevention Shares	Provides long-duration capital against contracted payments
Performance Prevention Shares	Accepts air-quality, carbon and transition-outcome risk
Corporate contributions	Covers asset-owner closure and remediation obligations
Carbon Participation Shares	Finances activity against qualifying carbon-price upside
Worker and community trust	Ring-fences social-transition funding
Reliability and remediation reserves	Protects against technical and environmental underperformance

Coal companies would not be paid to transfer pre-existing legal liabilities to the public sector. Owner contributions, closure reserves and environmental obligations would be calculated before public or investor capital entered the structure.

Payment Waterfall

Cash received by the vehicle would be distributed in the following order:

1. Replacement-power and grid-service operating costs
2. Worker benefits and required community payments
3. Mine safety, methane monitoring and environmental remediation
4. Measurement and independent verification
5. Required liquidity and reliability reserves
6. Senior debt service
7. Senior Prevention Share distributions
8. Performance Prevention Share distributions
9. Capped carbon-performance upside
10. Reinvestment in additional transition assets

Worker protections and physical system reliability would rank ahead of investor performance payments. A project that reduces emissions while causing unpaid worker obligations or electricity shortages would not qualify as successful prevention finance.

Risk Allocation

Risk	Principal bearer	Mitigation
Replacement-power construction	Contractors and vehicle	Completion guarantees and staged retirement
Grid inadequacy	Grid operator and vehicle	Reliability gate before closure
Coal-demand or policy change	Asset owners and transition capital	Pre-agreed acceleration and adjustment clauses
Emissions leakage	Performance shareholders	System-wide accounting and conservative deductions
Carbon-price uncertainty	Carbon Participation Shares	Zero speculative value in the base case
Worker-transition failure	Asset owners and public-transition layer	Ring-fenced trust and outcome deductions
Remediation underperformance	Mine operators and contractors	Security, reserves and long-term monitoring
Public-payment risk	Government counterparties and guarantors	Budget authorization and reserve accounts
Technology underperformance	Suppliers and investors	Warranties, diversification and performance testing
Baseline manipulation	Vehicle and verifier	Locked assumptions and independent review
Foreign-exchange risk	International investors	Renminbi financing or hedging
Regulatory change	Shared under contract	Change-in-law and revenue-substitution provisions

Why This Is Structurally Different

Conventional transition policy often treats coal retirement, renewable deployment, worker support, public health and fiscal adjustment as separate programs. That separation obscures the fact that they are components of the same balance-sheet transition.

The proposed structure would link retirement to replacement capacity, connect public payments to verified outcomes, ring-fence worker and remediation obligations and allow investors to fund the transition through transferable Outcome-Linked Prevention Shares.

The transaction would not depend on a single carbon-credit methodology. Air-quality value, grid services, fiscal stabilization, methane reduction, land redevelopment and carbon value would remain separate contractual layers. If one revenue source underperformed, the entire project would not necessarily collapse.

Arctica Advisory Insight

A provincial coal transition is not simply the substitution of renewable generation for coal. It is a coordinated restructuring of energy assets, public revenue, employment, health exposure, environmental liabilities and future climate risk.

Shanxi illustrates why a transition can be economically valuable while remaining difficult to finance. The entities incurring the transition costs are not identical to the institutions receiving the benefits. Coal companies face asset impairment. Workers face income risk. Municipalities face declining tax revenue. Grid operators face reliability obligations. Health systems and the public receive cleaner air, while climate benefits extend far beyond the province.

Outcome-Linked Prevention Shares create a financial claim on the successful coordination of those outcomes. They allow capital to enter before all the benefits appear, while ensuring that distributions depend on whether plants actually retire, replacement power operates, pollution declines, workers are protected and emissions are not merely shifted elsewhere.

The investable asset is not the closure of a coal plant by itself. It is a verified provincial transition service that replaces the functions of coal while preventing the financial, social, health and climate losses that an unmanaged transition would produce.