Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
possible final disposal sites there are other costs. Protests against
transportation of highly radioactive waste in Germany in 1997 caused the
most extended police operation of the past 50 years. The cost of the 30,000
policeman needed to protect the transport was about
50 million.
Further external costs are difficult to estimate. These are costs for
administrative acts, licensing procedures and installation of infrastructure for
power plants. The public radioactivity measurement system network and the
public disaster protection make up other external costs.
€
Internalization of external costs
The considerations above show clearly that the external costs of renewable
energy systems are often much lower than those of fossil or nuclear power
plants. To alleviate these costs, the conventional energy sources could be made
to pay compensatory levies, which could be used to repair the damage and to
convert the energy supply to renewable energy sources with lower external
costs.
The quantification of external costs and compensatory levies is not easy.
On one hand, much environmental damage is not clearly assigned to a single
polluter and many consequences are not yet known today. Many studies on
this subject have been published, some of them with very contradictory results.
Hohmeyer carried out one of the first extended examinations (Hohmeyer
and Ottinger, 1991). Besides costs for quantifiable damages to the environment
he considered costs for exploiting fossil and nuclear energy resources. Since
fossil and nuclear energy resources will be consumed by a few generations of
humanity, future generations will not be able to use them any more. Therefore,
financial reserves must be created to compensate for the higher energy costs of
the future. He also included costs for public goods, services, subsidies and
R&D. He excluded psycho-social follow-up costs of diseases and deaths and
indirect environmental effects, environmental follow-up costs of the nuclear
fuel cycle, hidden subsidies and costs of the greenhouse effect.
He determined the total external costs of nuclear power as up to
0.36/kWh
el
(base year 1982). The external costs of fossil energies are a little
lower. For the
current electricity supply
in Germany with a combination of
fossil and nuclear power, he estimated average external costs of between
€
Table 6.11
External Cost Figures for Electricity Production in the EU for
Existing Technologies
Energy source/
External costs
Energy source/
External costs
€
€
technology
in
/kWh
technology
in
/kWh
Coal
0.02-0.15
Biomass
0-0.03
Oil
0.03-0.11
Hydroelectricity
0.0003-0.01
Natural gas
0.01-0.04
Photovoltaics
0.006
Nuclear power
0.002-0.007
Wind
0-0.0025
Source:
data from the European Commission, 2003
