posts: 30007

{
    "id": "wp-30007",
    "slug": "untitled-reusable-block-196",
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                        "text": "Energy has been critical to the human progress we\u2019ve seen over the last few centuries. As the United Nations rightly ",
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                        "url": "https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/energy/",
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                                "text": "says",
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                        "text": ": \u201cenergy is central to nearly every major challenge and opportunity the world faces today.\u201d",
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                        "text": "But while energy brings us massive benefits, it\u2019s not without its downsides. Energy production can have negative impacts on human health and the environment in three ways.",
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                        "text": "The first is ",
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                        "children": [
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                                "text": "air pollution",
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                        "text": ": millions of people die prematurely every year as a result of ",
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                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/data-review-air-pollution-deaths",
                        "children": [
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                                "text": "air pollution",
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                        "text": ". Fossil fuels and the burning of biomass \u2013 wood, dung, and charcoal \u2013 are responsible for most of those deaths.",
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                        "text": "The second is ",
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                        "children": [
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                                "text": "accidents",
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                        "text": ". This includes accidents that happen in the mining and extraction of the fuels \u2013 coal, uranium, rare metals, oil, and gas. And it also includes accidents that occur in the transport of raw materials and infrastructure, the construction of the power plant, or their maintenance.",
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                        "text": "The third is ",
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                        "children": [
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                                "text": "greenhouse gas emissions",
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                        "text": ": fossil fuels are the main source of greenhouse gases, the primary driver of climate change. In 2020, 91% of ",
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                    {
                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/global-co2-emissions-fossil-land?stackMode=relative",
                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "global CO",
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                            {
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "2",
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                            {
                                "text": " emissions",
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                        "text": " came from fossil fuels and industry.{ref}\u200b\u200bPierre Friedlingstein, Matthew W. Jones, Michael O'Sullivan, Robbie M. Andrew, Dorothee, C. E. Bakker, Judith Hauck, Corinne Le Qu\u00e9r\u00e9, Glen P. Peters, Wouter Peters, Julia Pongratz, Stephen Sitch, Josep G. Canadell, Philippe Ciais, Rob B. Jackson, Simone R. Alin, Peter Anthoni, Nicholas R. Bates, Meike Becker, Nicolas Bellouin, Laurent Bopp, Thi Tuyet Trang Chau, Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chevallier, Louise P. Chini, Margot Cronin, Kim I. Currie, Bertrand Decharme, Laique M. Djeutchouang, Xinyu Dou, Wiley Evans, Richard A. Feely, Liang Feng, Thomas Gasser, Dennis Gilfillan, Thanos Gkritzalis, Giacomo Grassi, Luke Gregor, Nicolas Gruber, \u00d6zg\u00fcr G\u00fcrses, Ian Harris, Richard A. Houghton, George C. Hurtt, Yosuke Iida, Tatiana Ilyina, Ingrid T. Luijkx, Atul Jain, Steve D. Jones, Etsushi Kato, Daniel Kennedy, Kees Klein Goldewijk, J\u00fcrgen Knauer, Jan Ivar Korsbakken, Arne K\u00f6rtzinger, Peter Landsch\u00fctzer, Siv K. Lauvset, Nathalie Lef\u00e8vre, Sebastian Lienert, Junjie Liu, Gregg Marland, Patrick C. McGuire, Joe R. Melton, David R. Munro, Julia E.M.S Nabel Shin-Ichiro Nakaoka, Yosuke Niwa, Tsuneo Ono, Denis Pierrot, Benjamin Poulter, Gregor Rehder, Laure Resplandy, Eddy Robertson, Christian R\u00f6denbeck, Thais M Rosan, J\u00f6rg Schwinger, Clemens Schwingshackl, Roland S\u00e9f\u00e9rian, Adrienne J. Sutton, Colm Sweeney, Toste Tanhua, Pieter P Tans, Hanqin Tian, Bronte Tilbrook, Francesco Tubiello, Guido van der Werf, Nicolas Vuichard, Chisato Wada Rik Wanninkhof, Andrew J. Watson, David Willis, Andrew J. Wiltshire, Wenping Yuan, Chao Yue, Xu Yue, S\u00f6nke Zaehle, Jiye Zeng. Global Carbon Budget 2021, Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 2021.{/ref}",
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                        "text": "No energy source is completely safe. They all have short-term impacts on human health, either through air pollution or accidents. And they all have long-term impacts by contributing to climate change.",
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                        "text": "But, their contribution to each differs enormously. Fossil fuels are both the dirtiest and most dangerous in the short term, and emit the most greenhouse gases per unit of energy. This means that there are thankfully no trade-offs here: low-carbon energy sources are also the safest. From the perspective of both human health and climate change, it matters less whether we transition to nuclear power ",
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                        "children": [
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                                "text": "or",
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                        "text": " renewable energy, and more that we stop relying on fossil fuels.",
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                "text": [
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                        "text": "Nuclear and renewables are far, far safer than fossil fuels",
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                "level": 2,
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                                "text": "Before we consider the long-term impacts of climate change, let\u2019s look at how each source stacks up in terms of short-term health risks.",
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                                "text": "To make these comparisons fair we can\u2019t just look at the ",
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                            {
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "total",
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                                "text": " deaths from each source: fossil fuels still dominate our global electricity mix, so we would expect that they would kill more people.",
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                                "text": "Instead, we compare them based on the estimated number of deaths they cause ",
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                            {
                                "children": [
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                                        "text": "per unit of electricity",
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                                "text": ". This is measured in terawatt-hours. One terawatt-hour is about the same as the annual electricity consumption of 150,000 citizens in the European Union.{ref}Per capita electricity consumption in the EU-27 in 2021 ",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?tab=chart&facet=none&country=~European+Union+%2827%29&Total+or+Breakdown=Total&Energy+or+Electricity=Electricity+only&Metric=Per+capita+generation",
                                "children": [
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                                        "text": "was around",
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                            {
                                "text": " 6,400 kWh.",
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                                "text": "1 terawatt-hour is equal to 1,000,000,000 kilowatt-hours. So, we get this figure by dividing 1,000,000,000 by 6,400 \u2248 150,000 people.{/ref}",
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                                "text": "This includes deaths from air pollution and accidents in the supply chain.{ref}The following sources were used to calculate these death rates.",
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                                "children": [
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                                        "text": "Fossil fuels and biomass:",
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                                    }
                                ],
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                            },
                            {
                                "text": " these figures are taken directly from Markandya, A., & Wilkinson, P. (2007). ",
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                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(07)61253-7",
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Electricity generation and health",
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                            {
                                "text": ". ",
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                                "children": [
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                                        "text": "The Lancet",
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                                "spanType": "span-italic"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": ", 370(9591), 979-990.",
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                                        "text": "Nuclear: ",
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                                "text": "I have calculated these figures based on the assumption of 433 deaths from Chernobyl and 2314 from Fukushima. These figures are based on the most recent estimates from UNSCEAR and the Government of Japan. In a ",
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                                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima",
                                "children": [
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                                        "children": [
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                                                "text": "related article",
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                            {
                                "text": ", I detail where these figures come from.",
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                                "text": "I have calculated death ",
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                            {
                                "children": [
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                                        "text": "rates",
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                            {
                                "text": " by dividing this figure by cumulative global electricity production ",
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                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/nuclear-energy-generation?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL",
                                "children": [
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                                        "text": "from nuclear",
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                            {
                                "text": " from 1965 to 2021, which is 96,876 TWh.",
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                                "children": [
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                                        "text": "Hydropower:",
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                            {
                                "text": " The paper by Sovacool et al. (2016) provides a death ",
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                            {
                                "children": [
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                                        "text": "rate",
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                            {
                                "text": " for hydropower from 1990 to 2013. However, this period excludes some very large hydropower accidents which occurred prior to 1990. I have therefore calculated a death rate for hydropower from 1965 to 2021 based on the list of hydropower accidents provided in Sovacool et al. (2016), which extends back to the 1950s. Since this database ends in 2013, I have also included the Saddle Dam accident in Laos in 2018, which killed 71 people.",
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                                "text": "The total number of deaths from hydropower accidents from 1965 to 2021 was approximately 176,000. 171,000 of these deaths were from the Banqian Dam Failure in China in 1975.",
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                                "text": "I have calculated death ",
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                            {
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "rates",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                                "text": " by dividing this figure by cumulative global electricity production ",
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                            {
                                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/hydropower-consumption?tab=chart&country=~OWID_WRL",
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                                        "text": "from hydropower",
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                                "text": " from 1965 to 2021, which is 138,175 TWh.",
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                                "children": [
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                                        "text": "Solar and wind: ",
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                            {
                                "text": "these figures are taken directly from: Sovacool, B. K., Andersen, R., Sorensen, S., Sorensen, K., Tienda, V., Vainorius, A., \u2026 & Bj\u00f8rn-Thygesen, F. (2016). ",
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                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652615009877",
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Balancing safety with sustainability: assessing the risk of accidents for modern low-carbon energy systems",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-link"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": ". ",
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                            {
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Journal of Cleaner Production",
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                            {
                                "text": ", 112, 3952-3965. In this analysis the authors compiled a database of as many energy-related accidents as possible based on an extensive search of academic databases and news reports, and derived death rates for each source over the period from 1990 to 2013. Since this database has not been extended since then, it\u2019s not possible to provide post-2013 death rates.{/ref}",
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                                "text": "Let\u2019s look at this comparison in the chart. Fossil fuels and biomass kill many more people than nuclear and modern renewables per unit of electricity. Coal is, by far, the dirtiest.",
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                                "text": "Even then, these estimates for fossil fuels are likely to be very conservative. They are based on power plants in Europe, which have good pollution controls, and are based on older models of the health impacts of air pollution. As I discuss in more detail at the end of this article, ",
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                                        "text": "global",
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                                "text": " death rates from fossil fuels based on the most recent research on air pollution are likely to be even higher.",
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                                "text": "Our perceptions of the safety of nuclear energy are strongly influenced by two accidents: Chernobyl in Ukraine in 1986, and Fukushima in Japan in 2011. These were tragic events. However, compared to the millions that die from fossil fuels ",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
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                            {
                                "children": [
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                                        "text": "every year ",
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                                "text": "the final death tolls were very low. To calculate the death rates used here I assume a death toll of 433 from Chernobyl, and 2,314 from Fukushima.{ref}UNSCEAR (2008). Sources and effects of Ionizing Radiation. UNSCEAR 2008 Report to the General Assembly with Scientific Annexes. Available ",
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                            {
                                "url": "https://www.unscear.org/unscear/en/publications/2008_1.html",
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                                        "children": [
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                                                "text": "online",
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                                "text": ".",
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                                "text": "Report of the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation. General Assembly Official Records, Sixty-eighth session, Supplement No. 46. New York: United Nations, Sixtieth session, May 27\u201331, 2013.{/ref} If you are interested in this, I look at how many died in each accident in detail in a ",
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                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/what-was-the-death-toll-from-chernobyl-and-fukushima",
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                                        "children": [
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                                                "text": "related article",
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                                "text": ".",
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                                "text": "The other source which is heavily influenced by a few large-scale accidents is hydropower. Its death rate since 1965 is 1.3 deaths per TWh. This rate is almost completely dominated by one event: the Banqiao Dam Failure in China in 1975. It killed approximately 171,000 people. Otherwise, hydropower was very safe, with a death rate of just 0.04 deaths per TWh \u2013 comparable to nuclear, solar, and wind.",
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                                "text": "Finally, we have solar and wind. The death rates from both of these sources are low, but not zero. A small number of people die in accidents in supply chains \u2013 ranging from helicopter collisions with turbines; fires during the installation of turbines or panels; and drownings on offshore wind sites.",
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                                "text": "People often focus on the marginal differences at the bottom of the chart \u2013 between nuclear, solar, and wind. This comparison is misguided: the uncertainties around these values mean they are likely to overlap.",
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                                "text": "The key insight is that they are ",
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                                "children": [
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                                        "text": "all",
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                                "text": " much, much safer than fossil fuels.",
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                                "text": "Nuclear energy, for example, results in 99.9% fewer deaths than brown coal; 99.8% fewer than coal; 99.7% fewer than oil; and 97.6% fewer than gas. Wind and solar are just as safe.",
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                        "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/death-rates-from-energy-production-per-twh",
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                "text": [
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                        "text": "Putting death rates from energy in perspective",
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                        "text": "Looking at deaths per terawatt-hour can seem abstract. Let\u2019s try to put it in perspective.",
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                        "text": "Let\u2019s consider how many deaths each source would cause for an average town of 150,000 people in the European Union, which \u2013 as I\u2019ve said before \u2013 consumes one terawatt-hour of electricity per year. Let\u2019s call this town \u2018Euroville\u2019.",
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                        "text": "If Euroville was completely powered by coal we\u2019d expect ",
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                        "children": [
                            {
                                "text": "at least",
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                    {
                        "text": " 25 people to die prematurely every year from it.\u00a0 Most of these people would die from air pollution.\u00a0",
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                        "text": "This is how a coal-powered Euroville would compare with towns powered entirely by each energy source:",
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                                        "text": "Coal: ",
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                            },
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                                "text": "25 people would die prematurely every year;",
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                                        "text": "Oil:",
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                            },
                            {
                                "text": " 18 people would die prematurely every year;",
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                                "children": [
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                                        "text": "Gas:",
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                            },
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                                "text": " 3 people would die prematurely every year;",
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                                        "text": "Hydropower:",
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                            },
                            {
                                "text": " In an average year 1 person would die;",
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                                "children": [
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                                        "text": "Wind:",
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                                ],
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                            },
                            {
                                "text": " In an average year nobody would die. A death rate of 0.04 deaths per terawatt-hour means every 25 years a single person would die;",
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                                "children": [
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                                        "text": "Nuclear:",
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                                ],
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                            },
                            {
                                "text": " In an average year nobody would die \u2013 only every 33 years would someone die.",
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                                        "text": "Solar:",
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                            },
                            {
                                "text": " In an average year nobody would die \u2013 only every 50 years would someone die.",
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                "text": [
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                        "text": "The safest energy sources are also the cleanest",
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                            {
                                "text": "The good news is that there is no trade-off between the safest sources of energy in the short term, and the least damaging for the climate in the long term. They are one and the same, as the chart below shows.",
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                            }
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                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "In the chart, on the left-hand side, we have the same comparison of death rates from accidents and air pollution that we just looked at. On the right, we have the amount of greenhouse gas that are emitted ",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "per unit",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-italic"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": " of electricity production.\u00a0",
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                            }
                        ],
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                    {
                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "These are not just the emissions from the burning of fuels, but also from the mining, transportation and maintenance over a power plant\u2019s lifetime.{ref}Schl\u00f6mer S., T. Bruckner, L. Fulton, E. Hertwich, A. McKinnon, D. Perczyk, J. Roy, R. Schaeffer, R. Sims, P. Smith, and R. Wiser, 2014: Annex III: Technology-specific cost and performance parameters. In: Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Edenhofer, O., R. Pichs-Madruga, Y. Sokona, E. Farahani, S. Kadner, K. Seyboth, A. Adler, I. Baum, S. Brunner, P. Eickemeier, B. Kriemann, J. Savolainen, S. Schl\u00f6mer, C. von Stechow, T. Zwickel and J.C. Minx (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA.",
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                        "type": "text",
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                                "text": "The IPCC AR5 report was published in 2014, and relies on studies conducted several years prior to its publication. For technologies which have been developing rapidly \u2013 namely solar, wind and other renewables, production technologies and intensities have changed significantly since then, and will continue to change as energy systems decarbonize. Life-cycle figures for nuclear, solar, wind and hydropower have therefore been adopted by the more recent publication by Pehl et al. (2017), published in ",
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                            },
                            {
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Nature Energy.",
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                                ],
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                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "Pehl, M., Arvesen, A., Humpen\u00f6der, F., Popp, A., Hertwich, E. G., & Luderer, G. (2017). ",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://www.nature.com/articles/s41560-017-0032-9",
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Understanding future emissions from low-carbon power systems by integration of life-cycle assessment and integrated energy modelling",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-link"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": ". ",
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                            },
                            {
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Nature Energy",
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                            },
                            {
                                "text": ", 2(12), 939-945.",
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                                "text": "The Carbon Brief provides a clear discussion of the significance of these more recent lifecycle analyses in detail ",
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                            {
                                "url": "https://www.carbonbrief.org/solar-wind-nuclear-amazingly-low-carbon-footprints",
                                "children": [
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                                        "children": [
                                            {
                                                "text": "here",
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                                "text": ".",
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                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "Since oil is conventionally not used for electricity production, it is not included in the IPCC\u2019s reported figures per kilowatt-hour. Figures for oil have therefore been taken from Turconi et al. (2013). It reports emissions in kilograms of CO2eq per megawatt-hour. Emissions factors for all other technologies are consistent with results from the IPCC. The range it gives for oil is 530\u2013900: I have here taken the midpoint estimate (715 kgCO2eq/MWh, which is also 715 gCO2eq/kWh).",
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                        "value": [
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                                "text": "Turconi, R., Boldrin, A., & Astrup, T. (2013). ",
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                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032113005534",
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Life cycle assessment (LCA) of electricity generation technologies: Overview, comparability and limitations",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-link"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": ". ",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-italic"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": ", 28, 555-565.{/ref}",
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                            }
                        ],
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                    {
                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "Coal, again, is the dirtiest fuel. It emits much more greenhouse gases than other sources \u2013 hundreds of times more than nuclear, solar, and wind.",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
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                    {
                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "Oil and gas are also much worse than nuclear and renewables, but to a lesser extent than coal.",
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                            }
                        ],
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                    },
                    {
                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "Unfortunately, the global electricity mix is still dominated by fossil fuels: coal, oil, and gas account for ",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/energy?tab=chart&facet=none&country=~OWID_WRL&Total+or+Breakdown=Select+a+source&Select+a+source=Fossil+fuels&Energy+or+Electricity=Electricity+only&Metric=Share+of+total+generation",
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "around 60%",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-link"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": ". If we want to stop climate change we have a great opportunity in front of us: we can transition away from them to nuclear and renewables, and also reduce deaths from accidents and air pollution as a side effect.{ref}Burgherr, P., & Hirschberg, S. (2014). ",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S030142151400072X",
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Comparative risk assessment of severe accidents in the energy sector",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-link"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": ". Energy Policy, 74, S45-S56.",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "parseErrors": []
                    },
                    {
                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "McCombie, C., & Jefferson, M. (2016). Renewable and nuclear electricity: Comparison of environmental impacts. Energy Policy, 96, 758-769.",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
                        "parseErrors": []
                    },
                    {
                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "Hirschberg, S., Bauer, C., Burgherr, P., Cazzoli, E., Heck, T., Spada, M., & Treyer, K. (2016). ",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421516301240",
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Health effects of technologies for power generation: Contributions from normal operation, severe accidents and terrorist threat",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-link"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": ". Reliability Engineering & System Safety, 145, 373-387.",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
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                    },
                    {
                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "Luderer, G., Pehl, M., Arvesen, A., Gibon, T., Bodirsky, B. L., de Boer, H. S., \u2026 & Mima, S. (2019). ",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095183201500277X",
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Environmental co-benefits and adverse side-effects of alternative power sector decarbonization strategies",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-link"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": ". Nature Communications, 10(1), 1-13.",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            }
                        ],
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                    },
                    {
                        "type": "text",
                        "value": [
                            {
                                "text": "Hertwich, E. G., Gibon, T., Bouman, E. A., Arvesen, A., Suh, S., Heath, G. A., \u2026 & Shi, L. (2015). ",
                                "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                            },
                            {
                                "url": "https://www.pnas.org/content/112/20/6277",
                                "children": [
                                    {
                                        "text": "Integrated life-cycle assessment of electricity-supply scenarios confirms global environmental benefit of low-carbon technologies",
                                        "spanType": "span-simple-text"
                                    }
                                ],
                                "spanType": "span-link"
                            },
                            {
                                "text": ". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112(20), 6277-6282.{/ref}",
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                            }
                        ],
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                                "text": "This transition will not only protect future generations, but it will also come with huge health benefits for the current one.",
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        "title": "What are the safest sources of energy?",
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    "updatedAt": "2022-07-18T13:26:36.000Z",
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