This study combines the Life Cycle Assessment of the Italian electricity mix and external cost evaluation to develop an indicator useful for policy-making and evaluation. Even though external costs of air emissions are site specific, traditional LCA studies do not characterize environmental flows at geographical level.

There-fore, we adapt the LCA model of the electricity consumption mix to include site specific information. The geographical characterization of LCA air emissions and benefit transfer techniques are used to calculate the indicator, which can be computed for different countries and economic aggregates and reference years, also into the future.

In this work we apply the proposed methodology to two energy scenarios for Italy: one referring to 2019 and 2030. The first is based on the last available data, while the second on assumptions on the implementation of the European Union’s Green New Deal. The average external cost of the electricity consumption mix is 0.057 e2019/kWh in the 2019 scenario and as low as 0.019 e2019/kWh for the 2030 scenario.

We also find that, even though emissions linked to electricity produc-tion take place in many countries around the world, most externalities occur within national boundaries and are linked to direct emissions from thermoelectric power plants.