Assessing the climate and health impacts of energy consumption in European Union countries

Gen Pei , Jonathan Buonocore, Parichehr Salimifard, Brian Sousa, Lauren Ferguson, Joseph G. Allen

Burning fossil fuels for energy generation emits greenhouse gases (GHGs) that are the major driver of global climate change and its cascading health impacts. Combusting these fuels also generates air pollutants that pose an immediate health burden. Carbon and GHG emissions are routinely counted in climate policies and energy-efficiency standards and targets, yet the health burden of air pollution emission is rarely quantified. Here, we developed a modeling framework to estimate climate and health impacts of energy consumption in European Union (EU) countries. Our findings show that both climate and health impacts exhibit notable variations among EU countries depending on their energy source mix. For example, in Sweden the climate (0.5 €/MWh) and health (1.4 €/MWh) impacts of electricity consumption were significantly lower than the climate (15.3 €/MWh) and health (995 €/MWh) impacts in Bulgaria. In countries where coal or oil dominates energy supply, the health impacts can be larger than climate impacts by a factor greater than 10. For instance, Greece had 23.8 €/MWh in climate impacts and 654 €/MWh in health impacts. We also found that using fuel sources that can be “carbon neutral”, like biomass, can yield dramatically different health impact results. For example, Estonia and Poland had comparable levels of climate impacts (32.4 and 28.4 €/MWh, respectively) due to their similar shares of solid fossil fuels and renewable energy for electricity production. However, the health impacts in Estonia (1508 €/MWh) were five times that in Poland (284 €/MWh), and one of the key reasons is the use of biomass in Estonia. Our results highlight the importance of quantifying health impacts when evaluating energy-efficiency and carbon-reduction measures and policies. Energy reports with biofuels lumped into renewables may overlook the potential health burden of combusting biofuels.