Externalities - The True Cost of Fossil Fuel

Coal

"Full Cost Accounting for the Life Cycle of Coal", the first study to look at the major costs of coal from extraction to combustion. It finds that coal costs:

• $74 billion a year in public health burdens in Appalachian communities alone.
• up to $187.5 billion a year elsewhere due to increased health care costs of cancer, lung disease, and respiratory sickness, deaths and injuries that result from mining and transporting coal, and the emissions generated during the coal's combustion.
  
• $29.3 billion a year in effects do to mercury
  
• a conservative $205 billion a year in extensive carbon emissions, in the form of various climate impacts, and the way coal combustion is already effecting land use, energy consumption, and food prices across the nation.
  
• up to $18 billion a year in the costs of the spillage of toxic waste and its cleanup, the impact of coal on crops, property values, and tourism.

Add it all up:

coal costs the nation half a trillion dollars a year - $513,800,000,000 each year!

[Source: "Full Cost Accounting for the Life Cycle of Coal." Dr. Paul Epstein, associate director of the Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2011.]

 

Natural Gas

"The carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from gas-fired power plants are significant. A gas-fired power plant produces roughly half of the climate-related damages per unit of energy compared to a coal-fired plant, from 0.5 to 1.5 to 5 cents per kWh, corresponding to damages of $10, $30 and $100 per ton of CO2-eq."

[Source: “Hidden Costs of Energy - Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use.” The National Academy of Sciences, 2009.]