The Economic Effects of Environmental Externalities in Electricity Generation: The Case of a Greek Thermal Station

摘要

The present work concerns the economic effects of environmental externalities associated with the generation of electric power. The possibility of taking into account the externalities of various options regarding electricity generation requires consideration of the overall environmental burdens generated by them during their entire life-cycle. The concept of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been developed for this purpose and widely used in recent years in many different applications. Thus, the LCA approach is being used here in a procedure that has been developed to estimate the external cost associated with any technology system or process. An application of this procedure concerning the external cost of electricity coming from an oil-fired thermal power plant in Greece is also included. The external cost of the produced electricity, in this case study, seems to be higher than the average relevant data cited in similar studies. The main reason for this finding is very probably the fact that, in this case, the emissions of certain compounds are also higher than the respective emissions provided in those studies.