Renewable Energy Projects Have Substantial Benefits For Public Health
Renewable energy and energy efficiency projects aren’t only beneficial to the bottom line and to the climate, as they also deliver benefits to public health to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars each year, according to a new study from Harvard University researchers.
The study, “Health and climate benefits of different energy-efficiency and renewable energy choices,” was undertaken by researchers from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, who developed an assessment tool to calculate the climate and public health benefits of energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy (RE) projects. The researchers analyzed the positive impacts of these EE/RE projects at six different locations within the Mid-Atlantic and Lower Great Lakes of the US in 2012, and found that depending on the location and the type of project, benefits from EE/RE projects ranged from $5.7 million to $210 million per year, with the highest returns coming from wind farms and energy efficiency measures.
The public health and climate benefits for EE/RE projects were primarily due to “displacing emissions from fossil-fuelled electrical generating units (EGUs),” and individual benefits varied by the region, depending on how much coal-burning was displaced by the projects and how many people lived downwind of the coal plants studied.
According to the Harvard Gazette, “a wind installation near Cincinnati was twice as beneficial as one in Virginia, largely because of Cincinnati’s higher downwind population density and greater reduction in coal-fired electricity.”
Locations in Chicago, Cincinnati, northern Ohio, eastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and Virgina were the focus of the study, as these locations obtain most of their electricity from a mix of natural gas and coal. The researchers examined the potential impacts of installing either a 500MW wind plant or a 500MW solar plant, or using one of two different energy efficiency measures – 500MW of peak demand-side management (DSM) or 150 MW of baseload demand-side management (which is calculated to save the equivalent amount of energy as the 500MW peak DSM method annually).
According to IEEE, solar and peak DSM tend to operate during the daytime, which is when energy demands are highest, they primarily displace natural gas, not coal, while wind energy and baseload DSM can be used at off-peak times, displacing more coal than solar and peak DSM.
The researchers’ “high resolution model,” called the Environmental Policy Simulation Tool for Electrical grid Interventions (EPSTEIN), could be a useful tool for making policy decisions about where RE projects should be implemented, in order to maximize their benefits to public health.
“This study demonstrates that energy efficiency and renewable energy can have substantial benefits to both the climate and to public health, and that these results could be a big player in a full benefit-cost analysis of these projects. Additionally, this research shows that the climate benefits and the health benefits are on par with each other.” – Jonathon Buonocore, research associate at Harvard’s Center for Health and the Global Environment
The study did not include impacts of other related factors of energy generation sources, such as the total life cycle of coal or natural gas production, but lead author Buonocore suggested that he would like to evaluate these elements in future studies.
Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
CleanTechnica Holiday Wish Book
Our Latest EVObsession Video
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.
It stands to reason that, except for communities immediately downwind of an old coal power station, the ratio of health benefits to wider climate benefits will usually be highest for the electrification of urban transport. The emissions from ICE cara, buses, vans and trucks are made at ground level, only a few metres from the lungs of those who live, work and move about in the city.
Right. Most of the air pollution in N. Tx is caused by the internal combustion engine.
A $7500 rebate for plug-in car purchases would move more cars than a $7500 tax credit.
I hope the author of the original article follows up on other costs of fossil fuel use. I just read an article by John Flesher, AP, that tallied the cost of waste water spill/disposal of 43 million gallons on ranches in ND, OK, NM, WY, KS, UT, CO, AK, CA, TX. Although oil spills get more press, brine spills are much harder to remedy.
$98/HOURLY SPECIAL REPORT!!!!……….After earning an average of 19952 Dollars monthly,I’m finally getting 98 Dollars an hour,just working 4-5 hours daily online….It’s time to take some action and you can join it too.It is simple,dedicated and easy way to get rich.Three weeks from now you will wishyou have started today – I promise!….HERE I STARTED-TAKE A LOOK AT…..la….
================= www.Jobs367.com ☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣☣
Unless of course you live in the flicker shadow or are within hearing distance of an industrial wind turbine. Then the health “benefits” turn into minuses.
Unless of course it is on your farm, notice that none of the farmers getting royalties have any health issues from them.
Yes. The health studies show that greenbacks are a cure for wind turbine syndrome.
Yeah, that terrible ‘flicker shadow’. Must be a problem for minutes each day.
http://www.masscec.com/content/shadow-flicker
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/04/04/turbine-flicker-effect-draws-complaints/UKgf7nOwMHm8CWAtZ47V5L/story.html
Of course, “Flicker impacts can also be mitigated with vegetative buffers or window blinds.”
Both of these effects have been debunked by genuine scientific study.
You can read one example of this here: http://www.nhmrc.gov.au/guidelines-publications/eh57
Or read the highlights here: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/feb/11/wind-farm-study-finds-no-direct-evidence-they-affect-health
Thus we can conclude there are no minuses that we know of at present.
It’s not a health issue, but I have some sympathy for objectors to the warning lights on some turbines for low- flying aircraft. I wonder if these lights are often necessary, with modern radar, GPS and air traffic control. It should also be possible to shield the lights from below.
” within hearing distance of an industrial wind turbine.” Please! What noise monitoring equipment are You using? I have stood at the base of wind turbines with an output capacity of anywhere from 50 kilowatts to 1.0 megawatts and my hearing is perfect.. What noise? The blades give a pleasant “Whoosh” as they cycle around. How close do you have to be to Hear all your noise of concern? And just in case this is also one of your concerns-there are no piles of dead birds at the base either. The owner of the land where the wind turbines are located has noted one dead bird at the base of an array of dozens of turbines in the past decade. I have that many birds fly into my house windows and commit suicide in a 10 year time period.
The use of the word “industrial” is a dead giveaway that the person has been reading anti-wind propaganda.