Thread by @PietroMonticone

External Costs of Energy : How
Much Is Clean Energy Worth ?

asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/solarenergyeng…

Air pollution causes significant damage to human health, flora and fauna, agriculture, and materials. The damage costs are said to be external if they are external to the market. Here you can find the damage cost per kg of emitted pollutant.

The health impacts contribute the largest part (>90%) of the damage costs of PM, SO2, and NOx.

Here are shown the the most important pollutants and impacts on health where
• primary p (PP): directly emitted
• secondary p: produced by chemical interaction PP-environment.

Here you can see the damage costs in €cent/kWh of power generation technologies broken down by 3 impact categories:
• human health
environmental (including damages to agricultural crops, buildings, and ecosystems)
• climate change

Here are the damage costs in €cent/kWh of power generation technologies broken down by 3 fuel cycle phases:
• upstream and downstream
• operation

However, one must not overlook the intermittency of VREs and the corresponding variability in the amount of electricity they supply. To achieve a reliable power supply, backup capacity must be available, especially if VREs provide a high share of the total power production.

Of course, energy storage would be an attractive solution, but for most applications storage of the required magnitude and duration is still too expensive or the potential sites (for the most cost-effective option, pumped hydro) are too limited.

Without sufficient storage, the backup capacity requirement of VREs implies that the rest of the replaced electricity will come from FF, with the attendant costs.

Here are the damage costs of producing baseload power by wind turbines with NGCC plants as cleanest fossil backup.

Conclusions:

• The damage costs are worst for coal, oil, and lignite (7 €cent/kWh)
• Natural gas is cleaner, with damage costs intermediate between coal and REs (2.8 €cent/kWh)
• REs without backup have low-damage costs (0.1-1.6 €cent/kWh)

• Nuclear has low damage costs (0.5 €cent/kWh).
If the cost of catastrophic accidents is included, with a pessimistic assessment based on the historical record, its damage cost for baseload production is lower than for the least expensive VRE with backup (1.1 > 2.1 €cent/kWh).

cc : @CarloStagnaro @lucianocapone @chiccotesta @jacopogiliberto @marcocattaneo @DanieleVisioni @jimalkhalili @ProfBrianCox @GretaThunberg