Which power generation technologies are the least harmful to the environment & society?
It's wind, solar and geothermal.
Great meta-study provides an overview of negative externalities associated with electricity supply.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629620304606
It's wind, solar and geothermal.
Great meta-study provides an overview of negative externalities associated with electricity supply.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214629620304606
Comments
US. 'Coal generation created $517 billion of additional costs that neither coal producers nor consumers had to pay for, costs that were instead shifted to society at large. Oil; $787.8 billion, Gas; $265.6 billion, nuclear; $87 billion'
"the perhaps perpetual and extremely long-lived maintenance of caches of spent nuclear fuel"
And that nuclear accidents are high severity low frequency events, so difficult to compare with other energy sources.
From an energy efficiency perspective heat pumps are electric devices that save vast amounts of energy through efficient design.
Aviation fuel is discussed as a main point in the abstract and aviation fuel is not part of electricity generation (other than the small amount used for powering small electric systems on board a plane).