Environmental external costs from power generation by renewable energies

Abstract

In the following decades there will be a fundamental structural change in the European power supply system. This structural change is forced by several factors, e.g. the European Union Greenhouse Gas Emission Trading Scheme, the strategic goal for the European Union of a more sustainable development, energy policy targets to double the share of renewable ener-gies, the phase out or moratoria of the nuclear industry in some European Union member states, and the need of more than 200 GW of new power plant capacities in EU-15. The struc-tural change has to be embedded into an economic, social and ecological framework. Within this framework, there is a variety of possible options to create a future power supply which fulfils the multiple criteria. Generally, different technologies can be chosen which all have their own advantages and disadvantages. It is a challenging decision-making process because fossil-fired power plants tend to be economically advantageous and ecologically disadvanta-geous whereas renewable energy systems tend to be ecologically advantageous and economi-cally disadvantageous. This study gives a comparison of the estimated external costs (environmental aspects) and internal costs (economic aspects) of different power generation technologies in the year 2010 in order to support the decision-making process of future power plant investments in the framework of a sustainable development. A life cycle analysis gives considerable life cycle data for photovoltaic systems, wind turbines, fuel cells, bio-fuelled combined heat and power plants, biomass, water, solar thermal, geothermal, coal-fired, lignite-fired and natural gas-fired power plants as well as nuclear power plants. This database is used for the estimation of external costs which is based on updated factors of damage and avoidance costs for selected emissions. The damage factors are calculated with the software tool EcoSense following the impact pathway approach. Global warming and discounting are considered to be the hot spots in the external costs discussion. An avoidance costs approach is applied which is assumed to fulfil sustainability criteria. The comparison of the external costs of the technologies analysed shows that external costs of power generation technologies using renewable energies and nuclear power plants are in the range of 0.03-3.79 €-Cent/kWhel whereas the external costs of power generation technologies using organic fossil fuels are in the range of 3.37-27.98 €-Cent/kWhel. However, the comparison of the internal costs shows that fossil-fuelled power plants have the lowest internal costs compared to the other technologies analysed. This trade-off between external and internal costs requires a comparison of the social costs which are the sum of internal and external costs. The comparison of the social costs shows five social cost clusters for the ana-lysed technologies for the year 2010. Nuclear power plants have social costs of less than 10 €-Cent/kWhel. Wind turbines and river power plants have slightly higher social costs of 10-15 €-Cent/kWhel. Biomass power plants, bio-fuelled combined heat and power plants, solar ther-mal power plants, geothermal power plants and natural gas-fired power plants have social costs in the range of 15-20 €-Cent/kWhel. Photovoltaic systems in Spain, fuel cells, coal-fired power plants and lignite-fired power plants have social costs in the range of 20-35 €-Cent/kWhel. The highest social costs are caused by Photovoltaic systems in Germany with more than 35 €-Cent/kWhel.