Actuarial risk assessment of expected fatalities attributable to carbon capture and storage in 2050

Minh Ha-Duong and Rodica Loisel ()
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Rodica Loisel: CIRED - centre international de recherche sur l'environnement et le développement - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AgroParisTech - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: This study estimates the human cost of failures in the CCS industry in 2050, using the actuarial approach. The range of expected fatalities is assessed integrating all steps of the CCS chain: additional coal production, coal transportation, carbon capture, transport, injection and storage, based on empirical evidence from technical or social analogues. The main finding is that a few hundred fatalities per year should be expected if the technology is used to avoid emitting 1 GtC yr-1 in 2050 at baseload coal power plants. The large majority of fatalities are attributable to mining and delivering more coal. These risks compare to today's industrial hazards: technical, knowable and occupational dangers for which there are socially acceptable non-zero risk levels. Some contemporary European societies tolerate about one fatality per thousand year around industrial installations. If storage sites perform like that, then expected fatalities per year due to leakage should have a minor contribution in the total expected fatalities per year: less than one. But to statistically validate such a safety level, reliability theory and the technology roadmap suggest that CO2 storage demonstration projects over the next 20 years have to cause exactly zero fatality.

Keywords: mortality; actuarial approach.; CCS; risk; storage safety; CSC; risque; analogue; sûreté du stockage; mortalité; approche actuarielle. (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene and nep-env
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Published in International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, 2011, 5, pp.1346-1358. ⟨10.1016/j.ijggc.2011.07.004⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-00487175

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijggc.2011.07.004

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