Better for the climate, better for health, better for your wallet: the European Union (EU) would benefit from a faster energy transition in several ways. The result is a study led by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry (MPIC) in Mainz.
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Wenjun Meng’s team examined how the energy transition affects the EU. The Union has set itself the goal of becoming climate neutral by 2050. If it accelerated the expansion of renewable energy and reached the goal ten years earlier, there would be “EU-wide net benefits of around 100 to 600 billion euros in the scenarios examined,” reports the MPIC. The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
The benchmark for the calculations is the fuel prices from 2021 to 2023. These have now risen significantly after Israel and the USA attacked Iran and Iran then closed the Strait of Hormuz.
Short-term increase in electricity production costs
The team ran through various scenarios. The costs for the construction of wind and solar systems, the necessary network expansion including storage, network management and measures to reduce curtailment were taken into account. This effort could increase the electricity production costs in the short term – these are the average costs of generating electricity over the lifespan of an energy system.
In the long term, however, these additional costs should be offset, among other things, by importing fewer fossil fuels. There would also be cost savings in healthcare, resulting from improvements in air quality, as well as measures to reduce emissions.
Finally, there would also be a political advantage: accelerated implementation of the energy transition would strengthen energy security. This would make the EU more independent of energy imports and volatile prices for fossil fuels.
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Long-term benefits
“Renewable energy offers significant long-term benefits, but the transformation still needs to be carefully planned,” said project leader Yafang Cheng from MPIC. “Our results show that cleaner energy pathways become more attractive in energy system planning and decision-making when prices and policy instruments more fully take into account the climate, health and economic costs associated with fossil fuels.”
“Overall, the study underlines that the social and economic impacts of energy security, climate change and public health should be assessed together, and that clean air deserves consideration as a goal of sustainable development,” added co-author Ulrich Pöschl. Interdisciplinary researchers from Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Great Britain and China contributed to the study.
(wpl)
