Uncertainty in energy planning: Estimating the health impacts of air pollution from fossil fuel electricity generation

Costs of external effects such as health impacts of energy production are not reflected in market prices and as a result are often not taken into account during strategic energy planning. Computationally efficient, reduced-form models that estimate the health impact of air pollution from fossil fuel fired electricity generation can reduce the time and resources needed to analyze policy alternatives. Such models are currently being used for preliminary screening, retrospective studies, as well as in comprehensive multi-pollutant economy-wide approaches. One challenge faced by energy planners concerned with lowering emissions, particularly those using integrated multi-model frameworks for analysis, lies in the trade-off between the uncertainty associated with reduced-form air quality models and the need for sophisticated photochemical modeling that can be prohibitively time and resource intensive.