Based on the simplified impact pathway approach the environmental impacts from airborne pollutant emissions of Syrian electricity generation system have been assessed and the associated external damage costs to human health have been evaluated. The obtained results indicate that the environmental impacts can add considerable external cost to the typical generation cost. The estimated externalities vary between 2.5 and 0.07 US-cents per generated kWh for heavy fuel oil and NG fired power plants respectively. For the fuel oil fired power plants the resulting external cost, arise mainly from Sulphates impact, amounts to about 25% of the present generation costs. These results indicate the advantage of NG fired power plants as clean generation technology and the necessity of supplying oil fired power plants with SO2 emission reduction technologies. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.