The annual societal costs for the US for each scenario follow the same trends as each of the three societal ills (greenhouse gases, oil consumption and urban air pollution:

• Business-as-usual: 100% gasoline cars: the total societal costs stabilize over the century at more than $226 billion each year (these costs rose sharply prior to the economic recession of 2008 that sharply decrease the DOE’s projections of vehicle sales and vehicle travel)
• Gasoline hybrid electric vehicle base case scenario: adding hybrids does slow the growth of societal costs, but they still reach over $170 billion per year by 2100
• Gasoline plug-in hybrid scenario: plugging in HEVs cuts the societal costs to $128 billion per year, or a savings of $98 billion compared to the ICV-only scenario
• Biofuel plug-in hybrid electric vehicle scenario: Adding biofuels like cellulosic ethanol to the mix reduces societal costs to $91 billion by the end of the century, saving $134 billion annually
• Fuel cell electric vehicle scenario: total societal costs would fall to “only” $16.5 billion per year by the 2080 time period with the fuel cell electric vehicle scenario, or an annual savings of $209 billion by 2100

The costs of these pollutants were derived by averaging multiple estimates from the literature. Some were based on estimates of the health costs of the pollutants; others were based on the cost of implementing corrective measures to eliminate or reduce the pollution. The net average pollution costs for each pollutant were as follows:

The derivation of these pollution and crude oil import costs (including an estimate of the military costs of protecting our lifeline to Middle East oil) is included in a paper published in the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy in December 2009.

© C. E. Thomas 2009-2013