Brown coal imposes $800m health cost annually on Victorians

Researchers from Harvard University have produced analysis suggesting that the pollution from Victoria’s brown coal power stations are imposing annual health costs of $831 million, on top of significant levels of greenhouse gases that drive global warming.

The report by Jordan Ward and Mick Power of the Kennedy School of Government attributes health costs on the basis of local air pollutants emitted by the power stations, specifically SO2, NOx, and small particulate matter (PM10 and PM2.5) and a methodology they claim is based on work from the US National Academy of Sciences. Climate change costs are based upon the values for the social damage caused by CO2 estimated by the US Government for use in their cost benefit analyses.

The table below details their estimates of these social costs by power station. The ultimate effect according to the authors is to substantially increase the effective marginal cost of power generation from these power stations. For example in relation to Hazelwood they state the social damage of its output is about $75 per megawatt-hour, many times the cost borne by the operator in running the power plant.

Annual costs of air pollution created by Victoria’s coal generators

Power station Annual health costs ($) Annual carbon costs ($) Total health and carbon cost ($) Anglesea 170,800,000 60,600,000 231,400,000 Hazelwood 100,200,000 816,800,000 917,000,000 Loy Yang A 304,700,000 885,700,000 1,190,400,000 Loy Yang B 125,000,000 415,400,000 540,400,000 Yallourn 130,800,000 703,500,000 834,300,000 TOTAL 831,500,000 2,882,000,000 3,713,500,000

Environment Victoria’s Safe Climate Campaign Manager, Dr Nicholas Aberle, stated in relation to the findings, “Victoria’s old and polluting power stations are continuing to operate well past their use-by date. They’ve got every incentive to hold on because they’re cheap to run, but they’re not paying for any of the pollution or damage they create.”