Environmental damage costs from fossil electricity generation in Germany and Europe

While studies on external costs of electricity generation generally aim at the calculation of marginal costs for a new increment of power generation, we have applied an extended bottom-up modelling framework to calculate average health and environmental damage costs from fossil electricity generation in Germany and Europe. Aggregated average damage costs provide helpful complementary information to site and technology specific 'point' values to be used for more general policy analysis. Environmental damage costs caused by fossil fired power plants in the EU-15 countries in 1990 amount to about 70 billion US $. Results show that damage costs per tonne of pollutant emitted might vary considerably by site and - as structural changes like those observed in the eastern part of Germany after the re-unification show - also over time. A comparison of damage costs and private costs of emission reduction measures in large combustion plants shows that on the European average the implementation of current best available emission reduction technologies is well justified. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.