European Union Electricity Production and Air Pollution Emissions

Abstract

There is a growing concern about global issues such as Global Warming. However, other problems concerning air emission pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, particles, and heavy metals are also of great importance, since they are responsible for many health and sustainability problems. Various energy studies give much relevance to greenhouse gas emissions (GEE) leaving behind the other air pollutants. In this work, several scenarios for the year of 2020 were considered and for each one the air pollutants emissions were estimated. It was possible to conclude that if all fossil fuels were replaced by natural gas there would be a significant reduction in all pollutants except CO and non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC). Heavy metals would present a reduction of almost 100%. The other scenarios considered the replacement of fossil fuels, the solid ones first, then liquid and finally natural gas with photovoltaic and/or wind technology. As expected, reduction obtained for total renewables scenarios was of 100% for all pollutants except for CO₂ that presented reductions between 90 and 100% (only wind). It would have been avoided the emission of 240 Mt of GEE and 2.32 Mt of other pollutants which is rather important considering the global warming and health problems they caused.