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The Health Benefits of Wind and Solar Exceed the Cost of All Subsidies (arstechnica.com)
New submitter TheCoroner writes: A paper in Nature Energy suggests that the benefits we receive from moving to renewables like wind and solar that reduce air pollution exceed the cost of the subsidies required to make them competitive with traditional fossil fuels. Ars Technica reports: "Berkeley environmental engineer Dev Millstein and his colleagues estimate that between 3,000 and 12,700 premature deaths have been averted because of air quality benefits over the last decade or so, creating a total economic benefit between $30 billion and $113 billion. The benefits from wind work out to be more than 7 cents per kilowatt-hour, which is more than unsubsidized wind energy generally costs.
This study ambitiously tries to estimate the benefits from emissions that were avoided because of the increase in wind and solar energy from 2007 through 2015, and to do so for the whole of the U.S. Millstein and colleagues looked at carbon emissions, as well as sulphur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter, all of which contribute to poor air quality. There are other factors that also need to be considered. A rise in renewables isn't the only thing that has been changing in the energy sector: fuel costs and regulation have also played a role. How much of the benefit can be attributed to wind and solar power, and how much to other changes? The researchers used models that track the benefits attributable to renewable power as a proportion of the total reduction in emissions.
This study ambitiously tries to estimate the benefits from emissions that were avoided because of the increase in wind and solar energy from 2007 through 2015, and to do so for the whole of the U.S. Millstein and colleagues looked at carbon emissions, as well as sulphur dioxides, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter, all of which contribute to poor air quality. There are other factors that also need to be considered. A rise in renewables isn't the only thing that has been changing in the energy sector: fuel costs and regulation have also played a role. How much of the benefit can be attributed to wind and solar power, and how much to other changes? The researchers used models that track the benefits attributable to renewable power as a proportion of the total reduction in emissions.
Of course, it has long been known that if the negative externalities of coal generation were factored in it would be way more expensive than other generation forms. Did they also count the concerns about coal ash storage, which has caused drinking water problems and even a flood of radioactive, toxic sludge in the case of the Tennessee Valley?
Economist here, people are generally considered to have an intrinsic value. It's how we decide if we should put up a barrier on the edge of a road or not.
I hear the point you are trying to make and there some validity to it if the study is suspect.
But consider this.
Any pollution associated with wind or solar or electricity generation is going to be highly localized. And it's going to be in one place - easier to scrub, filter, and contain.
The only pollution from an electric vehicle going down the road is rubber from the tires (same as other vehicles) and brakes (which is about 1/10th as much due to regenerative braking.
By comparison, internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles emits their own weight in pollutants into the atmosphere each year.
Source: OHIO EPA.
The following pollutants are in car exhaust:
(If you skip to the bottom, you'll see PM10's are a huge threat from ICE vehicles.
Pollutants from Car Exhaust
CO2 â" carbon dioxide. This gas is naturally present in the atmosphere at low concentration (approximately 0.035%). It absorbs infrared energy and is thus a greenhouse gas (a contributor to global warming). Concentrations of CO2 in the earth's atmosphere appear to be increasing. This could have a substantial effect on the climate. The internal combustion engine contributes to the increased concentrations of CO2 in the atmosphere. The effect of carbon dioxide, however, is felt worldwide. It does not have a great impact on the immediate urban environment2. Nor are car engines the greatest producers of this pollutant.
CO â" carbon monoxide. The main source of CO in cities is the internal combustion engine, where it is produced by incomplete combustion. Anthropogenic sources account for approximately 6% of the 0.1 ppm concentration of CO in the earth's atmosphere globally. In an urban area, the concentration (and the percentage anthropogenic contribution) can be much higher. During a city rush hour, for example, concentrations of CO can reach 50 or even 100 ppm, which greatly exceeds the safe level. CO is highly toxic: it binds to haemoglobin more strongly than oxygen does, thus reducing the capacity of the haemoglobin to carry oxygen to the cells of the body. CO also has the nasty habit of sticking to haemoglobin and not coming off. This means that a fairly small amount of it can do a lot of damage.
CO can be oxidised to the far less harmful CO2 if there is enough O2 available. At higher air-fuel ratios the level of CO emission goes down. The fuel has undergone complete, or more nearly complete, combustion. CO can also be oxidised to CO2 in a catalytic convertor.
NOx â" oxides of nitrogen. While some nitrogen may be present in the fuel (as mentioned earlier), most oxides of nitrogen are produced when elemental nitrogen (N2) in the air3 is broken down and oxidised at high temperatures (approximately 1000 K or greater) and pressures within the internal combustion engine. Nitrogen monoxide (NO) is produced in higher concentration than nitrogen dioxide (NO2) but the two species are in any case interconvertible by means of photochemical interactions. Other oxides of nitrogen, such as N2O4, may occur; but are more rare. Because hydrocarbons compete with nitrogen for oxygen, NO is formed to a greater extent in cars with a 'lean mixture', that is, a low fuel-air ratio.
NO and NO2 are toxic species. Oxides of nitrogen also play a major role in the formation of photochemical smog, which is discussed below.
HC â" hydrocarbons. 'Much of the hydrocarbon fuel passes through the process unconsumed and is expelled into the atmosphere along with other exhaust fumes'. This remark was made earlier in passing. Fuel close to the wall of the combustion chamber may be quenched by the relative coolness of that area and not be burned. If the engine is poorly designed or is not in proper working order the proportion of unburned fuel rises. Hydrocarbons are also released to the atmosphere by evaporation from fuel tanks. Hydrocarbons can be dangerous to human health and are also part of the makeup and cause of photochemical smog, which is discussed below.
C6H6 â" Benzene and its
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Fuck 'em. I got a few bucks. I'll fight the case.
http://sci-hub.io/saveme/16a8/...
If the direct link doesn't work, search the DOI.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Here's a link to paper by Kharecha and Hanson showing the health benefits of nuclear power to 2012. 1.8 million premature deaths avoided due to reduced air pollution.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10...
Since nuclear has such a wildly greater EROEI than wind and solar,
No, you're wrong. Here is the science. Short answer negative EROEI on nuclear.
why isn't this story about the trillions of lives and quintillions of dollars saved by nuclear over the last 50 years?
Because there isn't any story to tell.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) Vehicles emit pollution that weighs roughly as much as the vehicle- every single year.
Electric cars emit tire rubber dust (same as ICE) and brake dust (but only 1/10th as much).
That's it. No micro particulates, no unburnt hydrocarbons, no leaing fluids, no CO2, CO, or Sulphur.
Any pollution created by the cars manufacture is going to be highly localized, containable, and filterable.
Any pollution created by electrical generation is going to be highly localized, containable, and filterable (even coal).
If your town has 1 million ICE vehicles in it on a given day, replacing them would remove 4 billion pounds of pollution per year from your town.
That's going to help many over 65, and anyone with breathing problems, probably cut cancer noticeably due to the reduction of PM10 combustion emissions.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The worst nuclear accident in history may have killed "up to" a million. Coal kills a million every year (air pollution in general kills 5.5M a year) in normal operation without an accident (and also has numerous accidents that kill thousands every year).
Coal only kills about 13,000 Americans a year these days, but is much worse in most of the world. For example, "researchers found that coal use shaves off 5.5 years of the average lifespan of a person living in northern China compared to the someone in the south." (source) In China alone Coal kills 670,000 a year.
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Right now about 55,000 coal miners in swing states are holding our national elections hostage trying to hold onto jobs made increasingly irrelevant by fracking and cheap natural gas...
Your statement is provably false.
According to the Wikipedia article on coal mining in the US, here are the top 10 coal producing states as of 2014, with their annual production numbers (millions of short tons) and their electoral vote allocations according the articles on the 2012 and 2008 US presidential elections:
So, for 2012, the top 10 coal producing states had 120 electoral votes which were split 71 for Romney/Ryan and 49 for Obama/Biden, while in 2008 it was 118 electoral votes which were split 56 for McCain/Palin and 62 for Obama/Biden. If you include Ohio (#11 on the list), the numbers change to in 2012 138 electoral votes split 71 for Romney/Ryan and 67 for Obama/Biden, and 2008 138 electoral votes split 56 for McCain/Palin and 82 for Obama/Biden.
If you go to #15 on the list, you get down to New Mexico and Virginia (5 and 13 electoral votes for Obama/Biden in both elections) along with Utah and Alabama (5/6 and 9 electoral votes for the Republican Ticket).
Of course, those are just raw numbers. Of the most populous states (Pennsylvania, Illinois, Texas, plus Ohio and Virginia if you extend the list to #15), only Texas is reliably Republican. Of those states, Texas and Virginia are probably the most economically diverse and likely see the smallest overall impact to their state economies as a result of coal mining. The states with a much larger proportion of their state economy impacted by coal mining (Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio) appear to be fairly reliably democratic.
Now, you may ask why I overlooked the 2016 election. The reason is that your assertion that 55,000 coal miners who are trying to hold on to their jobs are preventing us from making progress on energy policy. However, in both campaigns Obama stated that he wanted to bring an end to coal mining in the US and put coal miners out of work (perhaps he did not state it so directly). With that, he picked up a majority of coal state electoral votes in 2008 and came up nearly even in 2012. I would think a presidential candidate saying he wanted to eliminate your job might be a motivator to vote against him. And it may well have been for the coal miners, but in enough states to matter it was not enough to overcome the rest of the voters.
So, Obama got elected in both 2008 and 2012 we made amazing progress on wind, solar, and other renewable energy as result of the Obama administration energy policies. Right? Oh wait, he was so busy giving the big health insurance companies a gigantic handout in the form of the Affordable Care Act that there was no political capital for any other meaningful legislation, so all he could do was flush a bunch of money down the toilet with grants to supposed renewable energy companies that ended up burning through the taxpayer dollars and then going bankrupt. We would have been better off handi
That's the EPA's standard figure based on the average total contribution a person makes to the economy over the course of an entire lifetime. It's not just how much you pay him to drive the bus - it's all the money every business loses if he doesn't show up to drive the bus because their workers can't get to the factory.
And if there's a problem with that figure, it's that it's way out of date and hasn't been inflation adjusted since the study that produced it was done in the 1990s - the real figure from the same study would be a LOT higher now. But it remains the best studied, and most comprehensively an accurately calculated average financial value of a human life that exists in all of science.
There's another problem with it though - it doesn't calculate the emotional loss to family members when you die, the lost productivity to the economy for your funeral and the reduced productivity as they deal with the many difficulties of grieving, the bad impacts when a primary breadwinner dies and a formerly self-sufficient family is forced to use welfare to make ends meet or any of those things.
If you were to put a number on those losses, then even without inflation adjustment the number is probably low-balling it by at least 30%.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Followed your link, searched for EROEI (from your post), found this:
The energy return on energy investment (EROEI) is here defined as the ratio of the energy delivered to grid over the energy investments, both measured over the full cradle-to-grave (c2g) period. The energy return on energy investments of the world averaged nuclear energy systems are EROEI = 2-3 under the current conditions, but will decline over time when leaner uranium ores are to be exploited
https://www.stormsmith.nl/i12.html
Now, 2-3x isn't great, but it is more than 1.
Also, a chart from that source indicates that EROEIs of greater than 1 will last until after 2070.
https://www.stormsmith.nl/Resources/eroeitime070v2.jpeg
Perhaps I read the wrong part of your article, but it is also possible you were just hoping no one would follow your link.