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Social Cost Comparison Among Fuel Cell Vehicle Alternatives (cont.)


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SOCIAL COST OF EMISSIONS

As stated before, this study assesses the cost of human health damage from vehicle use related to criteria pollutants. Greenhouse gases and other pollutants are not considered. The costs used are from McCubbin et al (1996) and they were calculated in three steps:
  1. Relate changes in emissions to changes in air quality.
  2. Relate changes in air quality to changes in physical health effects.
  3. Relate changes in physical health effects to changes in economic welfare.

Table 7 shows the costs assumed. These data are based on 1991 US$ costs for 1990 emissions, with a 10% reduction in direct motor-vehicle emissions and correlated upstream emissions. The relation between the pollutant emissions at certain periods of time, and the health damages caused by these emissions are not linear over time due to the cumulative impact of exposure. Similar non-linearity relations can be considered for various aspects of the cost calculation. The cost damage for the same amount of pollutant exposure can be very different 20 years later even considering the same population. Despite these complications this study uses a fixed damage cost factor, and applies the regular Consumer Price Index (CPI) to bring its value to 1998 US$.

Table 7: Health Damage Costs Associated with Criteria Pollutant Emissions in the U.S.

EMISSION

($/kg of pollutant)

Low cost

High cost

Assumed

CO

0.01

0.11

0.06

NOx

1.35

19.94

10.65

PM10

10.80

142.69

76.75

SOx

3.44

27.80

15.62

NMOG

0.12

1.22

0.67

Ozone Precursors a

0.01

0.12

0.07
  1. NMOG + NOx. (Source: McCubbin et al, 1996)

RESULTS

Table-8 shows the final results of the calculation in terms of total amount of dollars to be expended over the time frame considered (roughly 50 years). The private cost is the composition of the new vehicle fleet cost, the fleet maintenance cost and the cost of the fuel consumed by the fleet. The total social cost is the composition of the monetary private cost with the health damage externality cost. This result shows that changing from gasoline technology to methanol or hydrogen technology can save $85 billion in human health damage costs, and moreover, save almost $3 trillion in monetary private costs. It is good to point out that the health damage results for alternative scenarios (methanol and hydrogen) mostly arise from the emissions of old gasoline technology present in the fleet mix.

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