A Review of the Life Cycle Analysis Results for Different Energy Conversion Technologies

Violeta Motuzienė (), Kęstutis Čiuprinskas, Artur Rogoža and Vilūnė Lapinskienė
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Violeta Motuzienė: Department of Building Energetics, Faculty of Environmental Engineering, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, 10223 Vilnius, Lithuania
Kęstutis Čiuprinskas: Department of Building Energetics, Faculty of Environmental Engineering, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, 10223 Vilnius, Lithuania
Artur Rogoža: Department of Building Energetics, Faculty of Environmental Engineering, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, 10223 Vilnius, Lithuania
Vilūnė Lapinskienė: Department of Building Energetics, Faculty of Environmental Engineering, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, 10223 Vilnius, Lithuania

Energies, 2022, vol. 15, issue 22, 1-26

Abstract: Technologies that use renewable energy sources (RES) are crucial to achieving decarbonization goals, but a significant number of studies show their relatively high environmental impact during the production phase. Therefore, technologies need to be compared in terms of their life-cycle environmental impact. The life cycle analysis (LCA) methodology is well known and widely employed. However, problems related to the methodological choices prevent taking full advantage of the LCA, as the results of numerous studies are often incomparable. The presented review aims to critically compare the impact of different energy generation technologies—RES (as well as non-RES) energy generators and co-generators. The numeric results are structured and analyzed in terms of the global warming potential (GWP) and non-RES primary energy consumption. The results show that RES technologies are superior compared to conventional fossil-fuel-based systems in most cases, and the high impact during the production and installation phases is compensated in the operational phase. The high variations in GWP from similar technologies result from different methodological choices, but they also show that the wrong choice of the technology in a certain location might cause serious environmental drawbacks when the impact of the RES technology exceeds the impact of fossil fuel-based technologies. Cogeneration technologies using waste as a fuel may even have a negative GWP impact, thus showing even higher potential for decarbonization than RES technologies.

Keywords: LCA; review; energy transformation; renewable; cogeneration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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