Renewables could lower adverse impact of power generation on human health by 80 percent: Study
A team of scientists at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in France has claimed that the impact of carbon emissions from power generation on human could be cut by 80 percent if renewables were used instead of fossil fuels to generate electricity.
Writing in the journal Nature Communications they said they studied various decarbonisation pathways which showed significant health benefits, but the renewables-led approach showed by far the biggest health upside.
They used climate and energy efficiency models to sketch out three scenarios for decarbonising the power sector by 2050. Then they combined their calculations with human health indexes and analyses of the emission levels throughout a power unit’s lifespan.
They found that a scenario where the majority of energy is derived from solar and wind power could cut the adverse health effects from electricity production by 80 percent compared with our current fossil-heavy economies. “That’s a very substantial benefit, if climate change policies can be key contributors to reducing human health impacts,” said Gunnar Luderer, one of the authors of the article in the journal. Emissions from power generation account for around 40 percent of all energy-related carbon pollution.
The World Health Organization estimates 4.2 million people die prematurely each year due to air pollution, much of which comes from the burning of fossil fuels for energy.
The PIK models predicted current energy trends would see six million years of life lost globally to air pollution by 2050. If the next three decades are dominated by renewables, that figure drops to about one million.
“This is mainly due to a reduction of air pollution from combusting fuels,” Luderer said.
Biofuel vs solar – The study also looked at the environmental and ecological impact of green energy generation heading towards mid-century. While bioenergy — the harvesting and burning of CO2-absorbing crops for electricity — has the potential to be low-emission, the team found such schemes would have significant environmental consequences.
In fact, measured per kilowatt-hour, the team found that bioenergy required roughly 100 times the amount of land needed to harvest the same energy from solar panels.Emissions from power generation account for around 40 percent of all energy-related carbon pollution.
