Transportation and Electricity Transmission - Energy Policy Analysis: A Conceptual Framework - page 225

Figure 13.4 The Added Costs of Electricity Technologies

$

Environmental
costs

Dollar
costs

National security
costs

SUMMARY OF COSTS

The costs of electric power transmission technologies are summarized in Figure 13.4. Transmis-
sion of electricity is not a fuel technology in itself, but a bundle of related technologies that adds
significant costs to the use of generating technologies discussed above to the extent that they rely
upon central-station generation, high-voltage transmission of electric power to remote locations,
or lower-voltage distribution to consumers. Electricity used at the location where it is generated,
and energy fuels that require no transmission over wires (e.g., fuel in cars and trucks), do not
entail the additional risks and costs of electric power transmission.
Transmission of electricity does not add much pollution to the air except during manufactur-
ing of wires, towers, substations, and insulators, where hazardous materials and considerable
heat from use of fossil fuels may be used to fabricate transmission equipment. Combustion of
fossil fuels produces considerably more air pollution and greenhouse gases than transmission
of electricity. Bulk electric power transmission will not produce atmospheric emissions that
cause acid rain. Construction and use of transmission lines does involve some disruption of
the environment in the form of unsightly transmission towers in rural areas and the impact of
transmission networks upon wildlife, especially birds, so the additional environmental costs
must be considered “moderate.”
Dollar costs for the use of electric transmission technologies are always in addition to the
dollar costs incurred by use of any fuel technology. Energy technologies that do not use electric