Abstract
The concept of social costs is a concept developed in economic theory long before sustainability had emerged as a development paradigm. Its final goal is to improve the efficiency in the allocation of scarce resources through markets. The quantification of social costs allows identifying market failures and measures to fix these (at least approximately). In so far social costs help to avoid waste of natural and man-made resources and can contribute to a more sustainable development. Furthermore, social costs can be used to translate sustainability issues to markets and ensure an efficient consideration of the respective requirements. In combination with information from beyond the market mechanism (such as the limitation of natural resources in absolute terms) social costs can serve as an indicator for sustainability, if all relevant information is taken into account. The underlying central principles and assumptions are described in Sect. 5.1. Section 5.2 presents the broadly accepted methodology for estimating external costs, the so-called Impact Pathway Approach. In Sect. 5.3 social costs of electricity production using wind turbines are quantified, before finally Sect. 5.4 summarises issues in applying social costs for measuring sustainability.
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Bickel, P. (2013). Social Costs of On-Shore Wind Energy in Europe. In: Jenssen, T. (eds) Glances at Renewable and Sustainable Energy. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5137-1_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4471-5137-1_5
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