Social cost of electricity generation systems

The decision to phase out nuclear energy and the ambitious climate protection goals require a restructuring of electricity production in Germany. Rainer Friedrich, University of Stuttgart, examines the issue of which generation technologies should be used in a future power generation system, whereby not only the generation costs but also external effects must be taken into account. In his opinion, water power, followed by brown coal, wind and possibly wave energy are the options with the lowest social costs. However, since the potential of wind and water power is limited, and since wind and wave energy require reserves or storage capacity and since on-shore wind power is not accepted everywhere, in turns out that especially brown coal is economical.