Lights and shadows of the environmental impacts of fossil-based electricity generation technologies: A contribution based on the Ecuadorian experience

Angel D. Ramirez, Beatriz Rivela, Andrea Boero and Ana M. Melendres

Energy Policy, 2019, vol. 125, issue C, 467-477

Abstract: Non-renewable technologies still play a significant role in the electricity generation mix of most countries. Thus, relevant up-to-date environmental data are needed to provide a good understanding of the environmental consequences of the fossil fuel electricity generation technologies. The focus of this work is to examine the fossil-based electricity generation technologies used in Ecuador, providing a compelling insight into the revision of existent international databases. The main combinations of fossil fuel and thermal generation technologies have been studied: fuel oil in steam power plants (FO-SP), fuel oil in internal combustion engine power plants (FO-ICE), natural gas in gas turbine power plants (NG-GT), and diesel in gas turbine power plants (D-GT). ISO standards and CML 2000 methodology were further considered to quantify the potential environmental impact associated with the systems. Results show that NG-GT has the lowest environmental burdens, while FO-SP represents the highest impacts in 5 of the 6 studied impact categories. It is remarkable that for the same type of fuel (fuel oil), the ICE power plants have a lower environmental impact than FO-SP plants. Finally, lights and shadows of fossil-based electricity are discussed to provide a general picture of the current debate concerning transition pathways.

Keywords: Life cycle assessment; Environmental impact; Electricity; Fossil fuels; Sustainability; Carbon footprint (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421518307286
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:enepol:v:125:y:2019:i:c:p:467-477

DOI: 10.1016/j.enpol.2018.11.005

Access Statistics for this article

Energy Policy is currently edited by N. France

More articles in Energy Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().