Hiding the cost

Lack of accountability in the power sector

If the power sector worldwide had to pay for the true costs of pollution and climate change, it would likely turn away from fossil fuel overnight.



Who's paying for agricultural losses and environmental damage?

Asia-Pacific carbon emissions overall are predicted to increase by 85% in the next two decades. Already half of global mercury emissions come from fossil-fuel power plants in Asia.

Acid rain is estimated to cost Asia as a whole some $90 billion every year. Power is one of the main sources of sulphur dioxide pollution, which causes acid rain.

Yet it is not the unaccountable power sector that will have to compensate for the 40% of Chinese agricultural land affected by acid rain. It is Chinese farmers.

Who's paying for power cuts and lacking public participation?

In the late 1980s, the government of the Philippines decided that privatization would solve the power sector's problems. It was mapped out behind closed doors with the power sector and international financial institutions, but only token public participation.

The result: an energy mix in which 60% (and rising) of Philippine electricity is generated with imported fossil fuels, energy insecurity through reliance on imported coal, more power cuts and consumer alienation.

To prevent this happening elsewhere people must be better informed about the true cost of power, and how alternatives to fossil fuel exist everywhere.

Who's paying for health damages?

Alarming new research shows that 1in 6 women of childbearing age in the United States may have blood mercury concentrations high enough to damage a developing foetus, according to the Earth Policy Institute (EPI).

In the United States, 23,600 deaths a year are attributed to air pollution from power plants. Burning coal also is responsible for some 554,000 asthma attacks, 16,200 cases of chronic bronchitis, and 38,200 non-fatal heart attacks each year.

Coal is not cheap - if you have to pay for it all

The price of electricity needs to reflect the true cost of environmental damage; remove fossil-fuel subsidies or, better still, transfer them to renewable energy; and make the power sector accountable to those who live with its impacts as well as consume its product.

If all this is taken into account, renewables begin to look by far the best option for a sustainable energy future.