Title: The importance of external costs for the competitiveness of renewable energies

Authors: A. Rabl

Addresses: Ecole des Mines, Centre d'Energetique, 60 boul. St., Michel, F-75272 Paris CEDEX 06, France

Abstract: Low environmental damage is one of the main justifications for solar energy, especially now that supply security has slipped from public consciousness. In recent years, there has been much progress in the analysis of environmental damages, in particular thanks to the ExternE (external costs of energy) Project of the European Commission. This note presents a brief summary and comparison of external costs for the major energy technologies. Even though the uncertainties are large, the results provide substantial evidence that the classical air pollutants (particles, NO _x and SO _x ) from fossil fuels impose a heavy toll, in addition to the cost of global warming. The external costs are especially large for coal; even for ||best available technology||, they may be comparable to the price of electricity. For natural gas, the external costs are about a third to a half of coal. The external costs of nuclear energy are small (at most a few percent) compared to the price of electricity, and so are the external costs of most renewable energy systems. Therefore, if the external costs of all energy sources were internalised by government regulations, most renewable energies would become much more competitive.

Keywords: solar energy; renewable energy; fossil fuels; nuclear energy; environmental impacts; external costs; air pollution; dose-response functions; atmospheric dispersion; global warming.

DOI: 10.1504/IJGEI.2001.000887

International Journal of Global Energy Issues, 2001 Vol.15 No.1/2, pp.49-58

Published online: 30 Jul 2003 *

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