Industrial and social costs
In order to compare different possibilities to produce energy, besides to aspects concerning technological maturity, availability of resources, complexity of plants, it is very important to consider the aspect of costs: in this connection, it is fundamental to consider that the social, total cost of an energetic production arises from two parts, namely from one side the internal, industrial costs, and from the other side the external, environmental costs. A real internalization of this second part of the costs is strictly required in order to properly evaluate the convenience of a proposed road for energy.
The first part of the costs correspond to the direct production of energy; to this voice there is the contribution of many parts, as :
Cost of fuel, that depends on local situation, market conditions, transport loads, potential policies for support of some production activities, potential revenues from wastes destination to disposal
Cost of operative plants, that is quite easily evaluated with the traditional systems of industrial engineering, taking into account plant structure, chemicals, maintenance, operation, disposal of residuals
Transport cost for energy, where it is necessary to consider the large difference between transport of electricity, transport of heat, possibility to transport of secondary combustible fluids
Potential political awards or taxes established by the public authorities for some forms of utilization of resources or type of energy, in account of social, political, environmental considerations .
The external cost is the other fundamental part of the total cost of energy, that must be considered carefully from the public authorities in order to really evaluate the sustainability of each form of energetic production.
Fig. 9 – Scheme of the Externé evaluation of external costs
To evaluate this aspect, two are the fundamental questions that must be proposed, and that require a clear, numerical solution :from one side a right evaluation of all the aspects of impact that a fixed form of energy production transfers onto the external receiving environment, and from the other side a definition in quantitative terms of the costs for the exposed population that are originated from this impact activity.
From the first point of view, in each case it is necessary to follow the whole line of production of energy, from obtention of the original resource, to its transport, to plant energy production, to disposal of residuals, to emission of waste fluxes; for this approach it is required together to consider from one side the intrinsic capacity to create impact of the considered technology, from the other side the capacity of the receiving environment to be modified or not from this impact (its resilience), in order to establish a quantitative connection between process and environmental consequences.
As concerns the evaluation, first from a sanitary point of view, and afterwards also with a monetary approach, of the effect on the population of introduced loads and environmental modifications, many well developed analysis for the sector of energy and its environmental impact indicators have been developed: it is, in particular, very important to consider the approach constructed from the European Commission with the Externé program, that leads to clear identification of these external costs for some specific geographic areas of large concern.
At the end of the evaluation of internal and external costs, the trade-off between them, and the consequent final evaluation of the convenience, from a social costs point of view, of the alternative solutions, is a clear responsibility of the political authorities, in account of many contributing aspects.