imposed by regulatory agencies in the United States on emissions of pollutants. These surcharges, however, represent a relatively small subset of total pollution and other external costs, because regulatory agencies have focused almost exclusively on emissions and not on other aspects of the fuel cycle such as mining, construction, transportation, and processing effluent. Recent and on-going analyses have attempted to quantify fuel-cycle impacts, but these analyses are not accepted by the regulatory community The costs associated with pollution may also be quantified through estimates of the cost of replacing high-polluting infrastructure. High polluting electricity-generating infrastructure may have to be retired to meet new national and international standards, and the amortization of the costs of constructing new infrastructure may greatly increase the baseline cost that should used for electricity. Current U.S. wholesale prices for electricity mainly represent the marginal cost of electricity production, because the infrastructure has been fully amortized or was government subsidized. Finally, there are many costs associated with pollution and other environmental damage that will not be reflected in any market or regulatory mechanism. These costs range from emissions that are not captured by regulatory surcharges to effects on those outside the area of control of the regulating government (e.g., acid ram and ozone depletion), to loss of wildlife habitat and areas with aesthetic or recreational value, to reduction of biodiversity. Unless an effort is made to explicitly analyze costs such as these (whether they are simply identified, or estimated quantitatively) alternative energy sources such as solar power may be inaccurately valued. 2.7.1. Estimated Externalities For purposes of this analysis, the economic viability of a space solar power system was assumed to include a relatively modest value reflecting the pollution foregone by not using a fossil fuel. The external cost per kilowatt hour for each type of fossil fuel was calculated, based on current regulatory surcharges imposed (see Table 2-10) and on estimates of environmental extenalitiy costs for CO2 (see Tables 2-9). There are estimates of pollution costs that are orders of magnitude higher than those used for this analysis. Table 2-11 shows the input values used calculating the cost per kilowatt hour of pollution avoided in this analysis. These values reflect the percentage of energy from each fossil fuel source. These assumptions also reflect growth in conversion efficiency of these fuel sources to electricity. The values used were: • $.006 per kilowatt hour regulatory surcharge, with a growth rate of 2% per year. • $. 123 per kilowatt hour value of pollution avoided by not using electricity from oil and coal in 1996, with that value dropping due to conversion efficiency increases to .0 92 in 2025. Oil was assumed to provide 9% of electricity and coal was assumed to provide 36% of electricity. • $.096 per kilowatt hour value of pollution avoided by not using electricity from natural gas and other sources in 1996, with that value dropping due to conversion efficiency increases to .072 in 2025. Natural gas was assumed to provide 16% of electricity and other sources were assumed to provide 39% of electricity. • The average cost per kilowatt hour of pollution avoided used in this analysis was $. 108 in 1996 and $.081 in 2025. The average regulatory surchare assumed was $.006 in 1996 and $.011 in 2025.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==