as a large frequently centralised activity producing an output that is fundamentally important to human wellbeing industrial development and economic growth electricity production is also the most broadly studied sector in this respect the risks stemming from nuclear accidents and the disposal of spent nuclear fuel have also always loomed large in public perception traditionally concerns about social costs have focused on electricity production at the plant level in recent years however the advent of significant amounts of wind and solar pv capacity has required for the reasons explained above a shift from a plantlevel perspective to a systems perspective consistent with a general shift of focus in the energy sector this is also why the present effort aims at providing a policyrelevant synthesis of the full costs of electricity provision at the level of the consumer rather than just at the level of the costs of electricity generation at the individual plant its input coal and its marketed output electricity are paid for in monetary units