Estimating Human Health Impacts and Costs Due to Iranian Fossil Fuel Power Plant Emissions through the Impact Pathway Approach

Abstract

Air pollutants from fossil fuel fired power plants harm the environment and human health. More than 91% of Iran's electricity production is from thermal power plants that use natural gas, diesel, and fuel oil. We apply the impact pathway approach to estimate the health impacts arising from Iranian fossil-based electricity generation emission, and in a next step, we calculate monetary costs of the estimated damages, for a one-year period starting from 20 March 2016 through 2017. We use the new version of SIMPACTS (International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, Austria) to investigate the health effects from 61 major Iran fossil-based power plants separately. The selected plants represent 95.6% of total Iran fossil-based power generation. Using the individual and different power plant estimates, we avoid extrapolation and our results can be considered more reliable, taking into account spatial differences. The total damage cost is 723.42 million USD (2000). The damage cost per generated electricity varies from 0.06 to 22.41 USD/MWh and average plant damage cost is 2.85 USD/MWh. Accounting for these external costs indicates the actual costs of fossil energy. The results are useful for policy makers to compare the health costs from these plants and to decide on cleaner energy sources and to take measures to increase benefits for society.

External costs from fossil electricity generation: A review of the applied impact pathway approach

“…For mortality impacts, one needs to determine the value of a life year lost, which in turn is based on the so-called value of statistical life, the amount of money that society is willing to pay to avoid an anonymous premature death. Finally, the health impacts are multiplied with the unit cost of health impact to calculate the related damage costs 27,31,32 .…”

“…Finally, the health impacts are multiplied with the unit cost of health impact to calculate the related damage costs. 27,31,32…”

“…Other data can be calculated or estimated by indirect ways, when no local data are available or the information is incomplete. 32,39…”

Evolution of External Health Costs of Electricity Generation in the Baltic States

“…Although there is a plethora of studies dealing with climate change mitigation policies and their impacts on GHG emission reduction, penetration of renewables and energy efficiency improvements, and overcoming various potential barriers for market uptake of clean energy generation technologies [ 2 , 3 , 4 ], the external health costs reduction based on the climate change policies and their positive health outcomes are not widely explored by researchers. Few local studies were developed trying to assess the external costs of electricity generation by employing damage estimates taken from other studies [ 5 , 6 ]; however, all these studies did not analyze the linkages between penetration of renewables and reduction of external health costs of electricity generation and did not address the linkages between external health costs reduction and improvement of health indicators.…”

Electricity conservation opportunities within private university campuses in Bangladesh

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