Safety along the energy chain

Abstract

We tackle the incidence of accidents within the energy supply chain and firstly extend the analysis from severe accidents to smaller ones. We are then able to go beyond fossil fuels technologies and estimate the hazard rate (ratio of casualties to energy) of wind power, the electricity network and the nuclear sector (for latent victims). Technologies are ranked, separately in the developed and developing worlds. In a second part, we compute the risk rate (ratio of casualties to population) for a variety of countries, accounting for the energy mix and imports; differences are found to be less glaring than for hazard rates. Lastly, we compare this risk of energy supply with the negative health impacts of energy consumption such as atmospheric pollution and road accidents. We find that for every casualty within the energy supply chain, there is a hundred more casualties among end-users in the developed countries and a thousand more in the developing ones. These stark differences call for giving priority to policies aimed at reducing the negative externalities of energy production and consumption