The Price of Energy Consumption - The Renaissance of Renewable Energy - page 216

animal, and plant health. To these, we can add future problems associated with climate
change, such as desertification, drought, flooding, sanitation, and agricultural productivity.
It is difficult to put a monetary price on these impacts as they manifest themselves slowly
over a long period of time and can arise far from the pollution source in completely
different ecosystems and societies.

Typical external costs include emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and the
emissions from the industries that manufacture materials for the energy facility, such as
concrete, steel, silicon, or plastics. To understand the full impact of energy use on GHG
concentration, the entire life cycle of a particular energy technology (from mining the raw
materials to decommissioning the facility) must be taken into account (see Figure 6.17 ).

Figure 6.17. GHG emissions (in grams of CO 2 equivalent per kilowatt-hour of energy
produced) of different electricity-generating technologies. Negative es show avoided
emissions. If CCS is used, the ranges are lower. For biopower, avoided emissions are
higher than emissions estimates. All technologies entail some emissions (at the very least
during the construction phase), but only bioenergy offers the possibility to remove CO 2
from the atmosphere. Source: Sathaye et al. ( 2011 ) (modified).

As we have seen, renewable technologies can have negative impacts on water, land use,
soil, ecosystems, and biodiversity. However, they produce negligible emissions of GHGs
and other air pollutants. Therefore, their impact on climate change and the associated
external costs are usually low (see Figure 6.18 ). 17 Considering the whole life cycle of
different technologies and including all externalized costs, if renewables were to replace
fossil fuels, the overall economic, social, and environmental costs of energy would
decrease and the net impact would be positive (Fischedick et al. 2011 ) .

Figure 6.18. External cost ranges, in terms of human health (air pollution) and climate
change (GHG emissions), of renewable and conventional energy sources. External costs
attributable to climate change dominate in fossil energy if not equipped with CCS.
Source: Fischedick et al. ( 2011 ) (modified).

Table 6.2. External costs (U.S. cents per kilowatt-hour) of renewable and

conventional electricity production based on Central European conditions