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The objective of the ExternE National Implementation project was to establish a comprehensive and comparable set of data on externalities of power generation for all EU member states and Norway. The tasks included the application of the ExternE methodology to the most important fuel cycles for each country and the aggregation of the site- and technology-specific results to more general figures. For countries already involved in Joule II, these data have been applied to concrete policy questions, to indicate how these data could feed into decision and policy making processes. Other objectives were the dissemination of results in the different countries, and the creation of a network of scientific institutes familiar with the ExternE methodology, data, and their application.

The objective of the ExternE National Implementation project was to establish a comprehensive and comparable set of data on externalities of power generation for all EU member states and Norway. The tasks included the application of the ExternE methodology to the most important fuel cycles for each country and the aggregation of the site- and technology-specific results to more general figures. For countries already involved in Joule II, these data have been applied to concrete policy questions, to indicate how these data could feed into decision and policy making processes. Other objectives were the dissemination of results in the different countries, and the creation of a network of scientific institutes familiar with the ExternE methodology, data, and their application.

The methodology used for the assessment of the externalities of the fuel cycles selected has been the one developed within the ExternE Project. It is a bottom-up methodology, with a site-specific approach, that is, it considers the effect of an additional fuel cycle, located in a specific place.

To allow comparison to be made between different fuel cycles, it is necessary to observe the following principles:

Transparency, to show precisely how the work was done, the uncertainty associated to the results, and the extent to which the external cost of any fuel cycle have been fully quantified.

Consistency, with respect to the boundaries placed on the system in question, to allow valid comparison to be made between different fuel cycles and different types of impact within a fuel cycle.

Comprehensiveness, to consider all burdens and impacts of a fuel cycle, even though many may be not investigated in detail. For those analysed in detail, it is important that the assessment is not arbitrarily truncated.

These characteristics should be present along the stages of the methodology, namely: site and technology characterisation, identification of burdens and impacts, prioritisation of impacts, quantification, and economic valuation.

Quantification of impacts is achieved through the damage function, or impact pathway approach. This is a series of logical steps, which trace the impact from the activity that creates it to the damage it produces, independently for each impact and activity considered, as required by the marginal approach.

The underlying principle for the economic valuation is to obtain the willingness to pay of the affected individuals to avoid a negative impact, or the willingness to accept the opposite. Several methods are available for this, which will be adopted depending on the case.

The National Implementation project has generated a large set of comparable and validated results, covering more than 60 cases, for 15 countries and 11 fuel cycles. A wide range of technologies have been analysed, including fossil fuels, nuclear and renewables. Fuel cycle analyses have been carried out, determining the environmental burdens and impacts of all stages. Therefore, besides from the externalities estimated, the project offers a large database of environmental aspects of the fuel cycles studied.

An aggregation exercise has also been carried out, to extend the analysis to the whole electricity system of each of the participant countries. The exercise has proved to be very useful, although the results must be considered in most cases as a first approach, which should be carefully revised before being taken into consideration.

In spite of all the uncertainties related to the externalities assessment, the output of the project might prove to be very useful for policy-making, both at the national and EU level. The results obtained provide a good basis to start the study of the internalisation of the external costs of energy, which has been frequently cited as one of the objectives of EU energy policy. Other possibility is to use the results for comparative purposes. The site sensitivity of the externalities might encourage the application of the methodology for the optimisation of site selection processes, or for cost-benefit analysis of the introduction of cleaner technologies. The usefulness of the application for policy making has been demonstrated through the analysis of a wide variety of decision making issues carried out by those teams already involved in ExternE under Joule II.

Further work is needed, however, to remove as much uncertainties as possible of the methodology, and to improve aggregation methods for electricity systems. These improvements are required if externality values are to be used directly for policy measures, not only as background information.. The acceptability of these measures will depend on the credibility of the externality values.

The Italian implementation study focussed on:

  • a CCGT gas fired power plant located in Trino Vercellese (province of Vercelli – Piemonte region, northern Italy)
  • a base load steam turbines oil fired power plant located in Monfalcone (province of Gorizia – Friuli-Venezia Giulia region, north-eastern Italy)
  • a hydropower system of AEM (Azienda Elettrica Municipale) of Milano, a municipal producer, located in alta Valtellina (northern Italy)
  • an incinerator located 10 km far from the town of Milan (northern Italy)