This project builds on the formidable amount of research that has been done on measuring the full costs of the use of different energy sources such as fossil fuels, nuclear energy and renewable energy sources. The internal costs, the private costs and the full cost are calculated and analysed through seven inter-linked work packages that evaluate, compare and harmonise the system costs associated with alternative energy technologies covering exhaustively the whole range of relevant production, social and environmental costs involved. In this perspective, the first objective of this Coordinated Action is to compile a consistent and detailed set of estimates of the external and internal costs of energy production for different energy sources at the national level for the EU-25 Countries and for Bulgaria, Turkey, Brazil, India and China, under energy scenarios to 2030. The project builds on state-of-the art methodologies to arrive at a dynamic assessment of full costs, by updating all the information from previous projects, according to the evolution of technologies and to the expansion of knowledge on external costs. The integration of private and external costs is built within one dynamic framework, to arrive at agreed ranges of estimates, for different countries, of the full cost of each energy source. Following this objective CASES provides state-of the-art projections of the evolution of energy prices and of the private and external costs of major technologies, likely to be employed to generate energy from different sources over the next 25 years.

Policy assessment, the second objective of the CA, involves applying the comparative cost data of different types of energy, to the assessment of alternative policy options for improving the efficiency of energy use and reducing its impact on environment over the next decades. Important in this context are not only the cost estimates, but also the range of their uncertainty; a better understanding of the social and private costs also strengthens the credibility of policy making decisions by reducing the uncertainty ranges. In this part of the project, the social and fiscal implications of a given policy measure are analysed, with an eye for the distributional consequences for poor and vulnerable groups. This assessment is dynamic and underlines the implications of different levels of internalisation on the investment decisions and on key social indicators. The analysis in addition covers the impact of the use of different methods of decision-making (the project focuses in particular on Cost-Benefit and Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis), on the selection of projects and the implications of different policies to reduce energy insecurity, now and over time and the implications of different taxes/charges on energy and/or on emissions on the degree of internalisation and the comparative cost comparisons, now and in the future. Different instruments to promote renewable energy sources are then compared in terms of the degree to which they internalise the positive externalities associated with renewable energy use.

The third part of the project is devoted to the dissemination of the knowledge on energy costs. Once evaluated and brought into a coherent framework, the results of the different components of the project are of great interest for the energy sector producers and users, as well as for the policy-making community. Dissemination consists of a set of activities to validate and disseminate the projects outputs. These activities range from publication of articles in the peer-reviewed literature, to presentations and lectures at project workshops and conferences involving key stakeholders and policy makers, and at external seminars, workshops and conferences, to open discussions with energy producers' and end-users' organisations.

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