Winds of Change Newsletter, December 2005     See sidebar for table of contents

Coal Very Costly, Not Cheap, If ALL Impacts Are Factored In

The external costs or the damages to human lives and the environment due to the operation of coal plants bleeds Filipinos by 141 billion Philippine pesos a year, Greenpeace says.

Red Constantino, Greenpeace regional energy campaigner for Southeast Asia, said, There is no such thing as cheap coal, just as theres no such thing as clean coal. Coal damages human lives, the economy and contributes to climate change, the gravest threat facing mankind today.

Citing the external cost study conducted by the European Commission (EC) in 2003 on different types of power generation, the Greenpeace study cited that coal-fired power plants registered the highest external cost.

External costs arise when the social or economic activities of, say, a power station, have an impact on a set of people and when that impact is not fully accounted, or compensated for, by the power plant, Greenpeace explained.

It added that the EC study has considered the climate change impacts, human mortality (i.e. reduction in life expectancy, cancers), human morbidity (i.e. respiratory hospital admissions, restricted activity days, congestive heart failure), its impacts on building materials (i.e. aging of galvanized steel, paint), crops (i.e. changes in yields caused by nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, trioxide and acid deposition), amenity losses due to noise or spoliation of aesthetics, and the impacts of acid and nitrogen deposition on ecosystems. Ed. note: This study didnt even look into the mining impacts, transportation problems, nor disposal of coal ash!