Assessment on impacts of emission trading on city-level (ET-CL)

Health impact assessment (HIA) on city-level energy production and consumption with climate change boundaries takes a wide perspective over environmental issues that can be dealt with on a city level. It studies many of the contemporary ideas, plans, and pieces of legislation in an integrated and systematic way. It tries to find hidden caveats, expose policies that are based on popular trends rather than science, and assess the impacts of new innovative solutions.

Scope

Purpose

The purpose is to assess the health impacts of energy production and consumption (including energy within products) in a city. The climate change and measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are taken as a boundary condition. Hence, the climate change impacts are not on the focus, but rather the impacts of climate change abatement measures that are put in action in the city. Individual and societal interests and decisions, and their interplay is specifically on focus. Situations where individual and societal values are in conflict are indentified and examined. Policies aiming at resolution of these conflicts are seeked for.

Boundaries

• Spatial: One urban area. Helsinki Metropolitan Area (capital region; Helsinki for short) is used as the practical example.
• Temporal: Current situation - 20 years in the future.
• Health impacts: All: mortality and morbidity. DALYs are used as the summary measure.
• Population: The whole population in the Helsinki Metropolitan Area is considered as the active population (making societal and individual decisions). However, health impacts are considered anywhere in the world both downstream (impacts of pollutants from Helsinki) and upstream (health impacts of the production of products consumed in Helsinki).

Scenarios

• Biofuels are used in traffic according to the EU legislation (10 % of consumed energy is biofuels by 2020?)
  • The biofuel is produced from a) palm oil or b) domestic sources such as waste or forest industry side products.
• Composite traffic is applied in personal transport.
• One nuclear power plant is built in Finland, and the heat load is utilised in the district heating of the Helsinki Metropolitan Area.
• For remote areas without district heating, alternative sources of heat are considered: a) domestic wood or oil combustion, b) small-scale district heating with wood or oil for the nearby community (2000-10000 inhabitants), c) electricity. (see Bioher).
• Energy uptake is increased from the exhaust air from buildings. (see Claih).
• More scenarios may be needed, depending on the Future Scenario Report of Climate Change in Finland (in progress).

Intended users

• City-level policy-makers in all sectors in Helsinki and everywhere.
• International policy-makers related to climate change.
• General public.

Participants

Preliminary draft, no commitments whatsoever made.

• The Risk research group from KTL.
  • Jouni
  • Marko (role?)
  • Mikko (role?)
  • Virpi (role?)
• PM epi group in KTL?
• PM tox group in KTL?
• Exposure group in KTL?
• PM emission group in UKU?
• Aerosol dynamics group in FMI?
• Cost-benefit assessors with cost functions in USTUTT?
• The Open Assessors' Network.
• Anyone interested. This is an open assessment.

Definition

Decision variables

• The citizen as a consumer: level of overall consumption (given the average impact per unit service)
• The citizen as a selective consumer: impacts of a given level of consumption.
• The municipality as an energy producer for district heat and electricity.
• The municipality as a provider of traffic infrastructure (including public transportation).
• The municipality as an authority affecting citizens' behaviour.
• The industry as a producer: impacts of products and services, given a level of demand and production. Hence, the focus is on the impacts per unit service, while the total volume of services is a value-neutral issue (the products are produced somewhere anyway, so why not in Helsinki).

Other variables

• Production of heat energy.
• Production of electricity.
• Production of consumables.
• Production of transport services.
• Consupmtion of heat energy.
• Consumption of electricity.
• Consumption of consumables.
• Consumption of transport services.
• Palm oil production and its impacts on
  • Greenhouse gas emissions
  • Biodiversity

Indices

• Time: Years 2008..2030
• Age groups: years 0-1, 1-30, 31-65, 65+
• Area: 129 areas within the Helsinki Municipality Area.

Analyses

• Value-of information analysis on all decision options.
  • VOI on PM emissions with an updated PM dose-response function.
• Optimizing of actions based on cost-benefit analysis and a utilitarian decision-maker.
• Analysis of conflicting interests of the citizen, the municipality, and the industry.

See also

• Nugget:Carbon pie approach
• Bioenergy in Finland: effects on health and climate change
• Variable:Assessment:Catastrophic non-linear impacts of climate change
• Risk assessment on Hämeenkyrö municipal solid waste incinerator
• Virtuaalikunta
• Kaupunkirakenne ja kansanterveys