The Unintended Effects from Halting Nuclear Power Production: Evidence from Fukushima Daiichi Accident

Abstract

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Energy Saving Can Kill: Evidence from the Fukushima Nuclear Accident

“…In comparison, in developed countries, as the energy supply is already guaranteed, researchers focus on the consequences of volatile energy prices. Two concurrent working papers are particularly relevant to ours: Chirakijia et al 2019show that cheaper heating reduces winter mortality in the U.S. and Neidell et al (2019) show that more expensive electricity increases winter mortality in Japan. We differ from in Neidell et al (2019) in that we focus on Japan's large-scale energy saving campaigns during the summer for identification and try to pin down the exact channels through which energy consumption affects heat-related deaths.…”

“…Existing literature suggests that the price elasticity ranges from -0.39 to 0.04 (Reiss and White, 2005;Ito, 2014;Neidell et al, 2019;and Deryugina et al, 2018). 34 Even using the largest estimate (-0.39) from these studies, nearly half of the reduction in Japan's electricity consumption still cannot be explained by price increase.…”

Temperature and energy price’s impact on mortality in European cities

“…Despite being connected, the two drivers (temperature and prices) have mainly been analyzed separately. Novel studies started to investigate empirically the direct impact of energy prices on temperature-related mortality and they find that changes in gas or electricity prices play a role in exacerbating or mediating excess mortality especially for vulnerable households (Chirakijja et al 2019, Neidell et al 2019.We aim at contributing to understand the extent of the issue in the European area. For this purpose, we match climate data, natural gas and electricity prices and mortality information for 280 European urban areas between 1990 and 2017.…”

The Private and External Costs of Germany's Nuclear Phase-Out

“…Neidell, Uchida and Veronesi (2019) similarly finds an increase in electricity prices due to the phaseout of nuclear power in Japan following the Fukishima accident. This phase-out-induced increase in prices resulted in a decrease in energy consumption, which in turn caused substantial increases in mortality during very cold temperatures.…”