To Whom Should We Grant a Power Plant? Economic Effects of Investment in Nuclear Energy in Poland
1
Institute of Agricultural and Rural Development, Polish Academy of Sciences (IRWiR PAN), ul. Nowy Świat 72, 00-330 Warsaw, Poland
2
Statistics and Research Åland (ÅSUB), Ålandsvägen 26, AX-22100 Mariehamn, Åland, Finland
3
Centre for European Regional and Local Studies (EUROREG), University of Warsaw, ul. Krakowskie Przedmieście 30, 00-927 Warsaw, Poland
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Energies 2020, 13(11), 2687; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13112687
Received: 7 May 2020
/
Revised: 21 May 2020
/
Accepted: 21 May 2020
/
Published: 26 May 2020
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Economic Development and Energy Policy)
Poland is the most coal-dependent economy and one of the biggest polluters in the EU. In order to alleviate this problem, meet CO2 emission requirements set by EU, and improve the country’s energy security, Poland decided to introduce nuclear power to its energy mix. So far, several potential locations for nuclear power plants have been officially proposed, mainly based on technical parameters, but no comparisons of the economic impact of such locations have been considered. Consequently, the main goal of this paper is to compare the national and regional economic effects of investments in nuclear power plants—for both the construction and exploitation phases—in the four most probable locations, which are similarly beneficial from a technical point of view. In order to simulate these effects, the spatial recursive dynamic Computable General Equilibrium model was calibrated until 2050 including agglomeration effects and featuring the regional economies of all Polish regions. The results show that although the construction phase is beneficial for economic development in all four regions, the exploitation phase is good for only one. The economies of the other regions suffer, to a greater or lesser extent, from the Dutch disease. The paper argues that the regional economic effects of such an investment differ significantly, due to differences in the regions’ economic structures; hence, they should always be taken into account in the final decisions on the power plants’ locations.
View Full-Text
Keywords:
nuclear power station; location; national and regional economic effects; spatial Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modelling; agglomeration effects; energy policy; Poland
▼
Show Figures
Graphical abstract
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited
MDPI and ACS Style
Zawalińska, K.; Kinnunen, J.; Gradziuk, P.; Celińska-Janowicz, D. To Whom Should We Grant a Power Plant? Economic Effects of Investment in Nuclear Energy in Poland. Energies 2020, 13, 2687. https://doi.org/10.3390/en13112687
AMA Style
Zawalińska K, Kinnunen J, Gradziuk P, Celińska-Janowicz D. To Whom Should We Grant a Power Plant? Economic Effects of Investment in Nuclear Energy in Poland. Energies. 2020; 13(11):2687. https://doi.org/10.3390/en13112687
Chicago/Turabian StyleZawalińska, Katarzyna, Jouko Kinnunen, Piotr Gradziuk, and Dorota Celińska-Janowicz. 2020. "To Whom Should We Grant a Power Plant? Economic Effects of Investment in Nuclear Energy in Poland" Energies 13, no. 11: 2687. https://doi.org/10.3390/en13112687
Find Other Styles
Note that from the first issue of 2016, MDPI journals use article numbers instead of page numbers. See further details here.
