 Quantifying the health and environmental benefits of wind power to natural gasDonald McCubbin and Benjamin K. Sovacool Energy Policy, 2013, vol. 53, issue C, 429-441 Abstract: How tangible are the costs of natural gas compared to the benefits of one of the fastest growing sources of electricity – wind energy – in the United States? To answer this question, this article calculates the benefits of wind energy derived from two locations: the 580MW wind farm at Altamont Pass, CA, and the 22MW wind farm in Sawtooth, ID. Both wind farms have environmental and economic benefits that should be considered when evaluating the comparative costs of natural gas and wind energy. Though there are uncertainties within the data collected, for the period 2012–2031, the turbines at Altamont Pass will likely avoid anywhere from $560 million to $4.38 billion in human health and climate related externalities, and the turbines at Sawtooth will likely avoid $18 million to $104 million of human health and climate-related externalities. Translating these negative externalities into a cost per kWh of electricity, we estimate that Altamont will avoid costs of 1.8–11.8 cents/kWh and Sawtooth will avoid costs of 1.5–8.2 cents/kWh. Keywords: Wind energy; Wind turbines; Wind power (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:53:y:2013:i:c:p:429-441 DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2012.11.004 Access Statistics for this article Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier |
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