Assessing Social Impacts in Current and Future Electricity Production in the European Union

Abstract

In this chapter social impacts of European electricity production are compared between the current situation and the REFLEX scenarios for 2050 from a life cycle perspective using the SOCA tool. The analyses indicate that for a limited number of social impact categories the SOCA add-on tool can identify geographic locations where improvement in social performance may non-negligibly improve the social impacts for future energy systems. Results show that gas supply from Russia is a major cause of social impact for all future scenarios in the subcategory “fair salary” due to the fact that the minimum wage is below the living wage in the country. The specific process for electricity generation in Europe contributes to social impacts in the same category to a lesser extent.