WP 2 - Human Health Related External Costs of Different Energy Sources

Objectives

  • To collect data on life cycle emissions for state-of-the-art energy conversion technologies;
  • To describe the state-of-the art methodology to estimate external costs from health impacts and from damage to materials and crops;
  • To include the methodologies developed in WP3 to assess damage caused by eutrophication, acidification, land use change and climate change into the ExternE framework and tools;
  • To calculate marginal external costs for state-of-the-art technologies in one selected country;
  • To organise a joint WPs 2-7 workshop (Stakeholders Workshop 1) to discuss the methodology to estimate internal and external costs with stakeholders.

Description of work

Task 1: to identify and describe the pressures to the environment stemming from the latest state-of-the-art energy conversion technologies. Relevant pressures, i.e. that cause not negligible external costs, are taken into account. Data are collected for the EU. Emissions of currently used techniques in China, India, Brazil, Bulgaria and Turkey are also provided. PSI provides data for nuclear power plants including the life cycle.

Task 2: to describe the current state-of-the-art methodology to estimate external costs. If appropriate, ranges rather than one single parameter value are reported to carry out sensitivity analyses. The methodology includes impacts of air pollutants to human health, materials and crops. PSI reports on methodologies to assess the exposure of the population to emissions of radioactive substances.

Task 3: to incorporate findings from WP3, especially the methodology to cover land use change, acidification and eutrophication, visual intrusion and climate change into the methodology to generate external cost estimates and into the ECOSENSE tool to calculate marginal external costs.

Task 4: to demonstrate the application of the methodology, by estimating external costs for the different technologies at specific sites in Germany.

Task 5: to organise a joint WPs 2-7 workshop for stakeholders, to discuss the methodology to calculate external and private costs and the results for selected sites.

All tasks are carried out under the co-ordination of USTUTT/IER, with the direct involvement of the institutions of the interested countries (COPPETEC, IIMA, ERI, EAP, TUBITAK, PSI).

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