FAU study counts cost of switch to electricity generated using coal

In addition to serious economic damage, the energy crisis of 2021/22 also had dramatic consequences for the environment and people’s health. This is the conclusion reached by two researchers at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) in a new study. Although the temporary switch from gas to coal for producing electricity was cheaper and contributed to securing the energy supply, in the six European countries featured in the study, it caused additional costs of around one billion euros for the environment and health. The study has been published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

For their study, Prof. Dr. Mario Liebensteiner, Assistant Professorship for Energy Markets and Energy Systems Analysis at FAU, and his student Alex Kimani, analyzed daily data from 2015 to 2023 for six EU countries: the Czech Republic, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Poland, and identified the effect of those days where coal was cheaper for producing electricity than gas.

Almost twenty five percent more coal-generated electricity

During the 2021/22 energy crisis, triggered among other factors by Russia’s attack on Ukraine, gas was at times so expensive that coal-fired power plants were used more often to generate electricity. During the 510 days of the crisis between July 1, 2021 and December 31, 2022, the proportion of electricity in the energy mix generated using coal rose by 23 percent on average. For the six countries in the study, this corresponds to around 53 terawatt hours (53 billion kilowatt hours) of additional electricity generated using coal. In absolute terms, the largest increase was in Germany with around 56 gigawatt hours of additional electricity produced using coal – a rise of 13.5 percent.

Serious illnesses and deaths increased by almost a fifth

At the same time, emissions also rose significantly by a total of around 36 million tons of carbon dioxide (plus 10 percent) as well as local air pollutants with a 19 percent increase in fine particulate matter, 10 percent in nitrogen oxides and 24 percent sulfur dioxide. The authors deduce from this that around 1,285 additional premature deaths and around 11,781 cases of serious illness occurred, which corresponds to an increase of 17 percent. In addition, they estimated that the additional air pollution generated health costs of over one billion euros (prices in 2021).

*DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2025.107397