Influence of energy mix on the life cycle of an eco-neighborhood, a case study of 150 countries

Modeste Kameni Nematchoua, Somayeh Asadi and Sigrid Reiter

Renewable Energy, 2020, vol. 162, issue C, 81-97

Abstract: In recent years, the destruction of the ecosystem, due to the strong emission of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere by humans has led to significant damage to wildlife, human health, and flora. This has significantly changed the human life cycle. Nowadays, the environmental damage costs are applied for the countries strongly impacting pollutant emission. To this end, developing countries receive annual compensation from the countries considered to be the most polluting. So far, decision-makers seem to be unaware that, at the scale of an eco-neighborhood, some emerging countries produce also a significant amount of CO2. The main purpose of this research is to quantify and to compare the effect of the energy mix of 150 countries on three environmental impacts generated by an eco-neighborhood: greenhouse effect, energy demand, and biodiversity damage. To perform this comparison, the same neighborhood design is applied to 150 countries, but four parameters are adapted to each country: energy mix, local climate, building materials, and occupants’ mobility. In addition, this research evaluates the induced environmental costs of the neighborhood over a life cycle of 100 years and examines the impact of mobility and photovoltaic panel on these environmental costs. The different environmental impacts were evaluated by the Pleiades ACV simulation software under four phases (construction, use, renovation, and demolition), before being translated into environmental costs. Among the four local parameters (energy mix, local materials, climate, and transport), the energy mix has the most significant effect on the three studied environmental impacts. The results show that the countries having a higher concentration of renewable energy sources produce lower CO2 than others. Domestic and material wastes are also one of the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions and biodiversity damage in a sustainable neighborhood. The biodiversity damage is high in Sub-Sahara Africa, and MiddleEast, but low in the USA, Brazil, European Union, Russia, and Australia. The implementation of photovoltaic panels in a sustainable neighborhood mitigates, on average, 15.9% of carbon dioxide emissions and 21.2% of primary energy demand; but, unfortunately, this solution increases up to 25.0% the biodiversity damage.

Keywords: Life cycle; Energy mix; Eco-neighborhood; Biodiversity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148120312179
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:renene:v:162:y:2020:i:c:p:81-97

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2020.07.141

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

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