Objective
An internationally agreed methodology will be made available, for evaluating environmental costs of all major electricity generating fuel cycles in Europe.
An accounting system for external costs of all major electricity generating fuel cycles in Europe will be developed, and additional research requirements will be identified.
The project successfully developed a 'bottom-up' methodology for the evaluation of the external costs of fuel costs and demonstrated its application to the coal and nuclear fuel cycles. However, the work identified the high degree of uncertainty existing in a number of areas and several gaps in the available data. Particular ideas identified for further work were the evaluation of the impacts of global warming, the impacts of air pollutants on health, the valuation of mortality and the impacts arising from nuclear accidents. The results also showed that, due to the regional nature of a number of the important impacts, it is necessary to extend the analysis to a geographical area up to 1000km from the source.
Each important category of damage will be studied separately. The effects of incremental fuel cycle investment will be assessed to derive marginal external costs consistent with the requirements of energy models. Expert reviews will be undertaken for each stage of the impact pathway: technologies, burdens, impacts and valuation.
New fuel cycles will initially be developed for a single reference environment. Real reference environments will be used to permit investigation of geographical variations in environmental external costs. Evaluative studies will be undertaken by a single group of economists to ensure consistency.
The resulting accounting framework will be incorporated in a data base system.
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contracts
Coordinator
OX11 0RA Didcot - Oxfordshire
United Kingdom
Participants (5)
92263 Fontenay Aux Roses
1348 Louvain-la-neuve
75008 Paris
WC2H 7JJ London
70565 Stuttgart
