External cost of pollutant emissions in Turkey

Abstract

External costs that occur in the use of energy resources are one of the most important criteria in determining energy and environmental policies. For this purpose, it is important to know the external costs of any energy sources. The purpose of this study is to calculate external costs due to air pollutants in Turkey for the years 2000 and 2019. The air pollutants namely ammonia, nonmethane volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and sulphur dioxide have been taken into consideration in the evaluation for the impact categories-human health damage, loss of biodiversity, crop losses, and buildings damaged. These pollutant emissions data were obtained from the European Environmental Agency database. Then, these pollutant emissions data were used in the monetization calculations for the years 2000 and 2019. According to the evaluation, air pollutant emissions’ total external costs in Turkey were 25135,72 Million Euros and 24654,42 Million Euros for the years 2000 and 2019 respectively.