Microscopically small fine dust particles from German coal-fired power plants annually cause around 33,000 years of life lost in Germany and Europe. The power plants with the highest pollutant emissions are the lignite-fired plants Jänschwalde in Brandenburg and Niederaußem in Nordrhein-Westfalen. These were the findings of a current study conducted by the University of Stuttgart on behalf of Greenpeace.*) The pollutants spread for thousands of kilometres throughout Europe.
The Institute for Energy Economy and Rational Use of Energy (IER) of the University of Stuttgart investigated for the first time the atmospheric spread of pollutant emissions and showed which damage to health the 67 most high-performance German coal-fired power plants cause. The tool developed and used by IER was the EcoSense model, the most highly developed tool to determine the health, ecological and economical effects of power plants in Europe. The model uses data on wind force and direction, humidity, precipitation, as well as other meteorological parameters. This is used to calcuate the spread and chemical conversion of the pollutants from various sources. The damage cause by coal-fired power plants does not arise first and foremost as a result of emmitted fine dust but through the emissions of gases (sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide), which are converted in the air together with ammoniac from agriculture. Therefore, the greatest damage does not occur in the direct vicinity of power plants but around 50 to 150 kilometres away. The damage to health is ascertained through the change in concentration and the number of inhabitants; the results of epidemiological studies are thereby evaluated.
Accordingly, operating the 67 coal-fired power plants for one year led to an arithmetic loss of
in total 33,000 years of life in the whole of Europe, of which around half of these were in
Germany. Converted, this corresponds to an average loss of lifetime in Germany of 1.8 hours per
person. Added to this is the loss of around 700,000 workdays as a result of respiratory and
cardiovascular diseases. The damage arises through the fine dust being inhaled and causing
inflammations in the lung tissues and in the arteries, which then lead to respiratory and
cardiovascular diseases. The greatest damage is thereby caused by coal-fired power plants, to which
nine of the ten most damaging plants are to be attributed.
The environmental organisation, Greenpeace, is demanding a complete withdrawal from
coal-fired power generation by the year 2040. The particularly damaging lignite should be phased
out by 2030 at the latest. “In order to avoid incidences of death and illnesses, politicians must
finally decide on withdrawing from the coal-fired industry“, said Gerald Neubauer, energy expert
from Greenpeace. “Coal-fired power plants are undoubtedly associated with higher environmental and
health risks than other power generating forms, however there also have some advantages, such as,
for example, the low energy generating costs and the high security of supply by a domestic energy
supplier. These advantages and disadvantages are to be carefully weighed up against each other“,
according to the principle investigator at the Stuttgart Institute for Energy Economy and Rational
Use of Energy, Prof. Rainer Friedrich.
*) Original study at
http://www.greenpeace.de/fileadmin/gpd/user_upload/themen/energie/130401_Deliverable_IER_to_GREENPEACE_DE.pdf
http://www.greenpeace.de/fileadmin/gpd/user_upload/themen/klima/Kohle-Gesundheitsreport.pdf
Further information:
Prof. Rainer Friedrich, University of Stuttgart, Institute for Energy Economy and Rational
Use of Energy, Tel. 0711/685-87812, Email: Rainer.Friedrich (at) ier.uni-stuttgart.de
Andrea Mayer-Grenu, University of Stuttgart, University Communication Department, Tel.
0711/685-82176, Email: andrea.mayer-grenu (at) hkom.uni-stuttgart.de