LCA of renewable energy for electricity generation systems--A review

Varun, I.K. Bhat and Ravi Prakash

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2009, vol. 13, issue 5, 1067-1073

Abstract: Sustainable development requires methods and tools to measure and compare the environmental impacts of human activities for various products (goods and services). Providing society with goods and services contributes to a wide range of environmental impacts. Environmental impacts include emissions into the environment and the consumption of resources as well as other interventions such as land use, etc. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique for assessing environmental loads of a product or a system. The aim of this paper is to review existing energy and CO2 life cycle analyses of renewable sources based electricity generation systems. The paper points out that carbon emission from renewable energy (RE) systems are not nil, as is generally assumed while evaluating carbon credits. Further the range of carbon emissions from RE systems have been found out from existing literature and compared with those from fossil fuel based systems, so as to assist in a rational choice of energy supply systems.

Keywords: Sustainable; development; Environmental; impacts; Emissions; Energy; LCA (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (130)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364-0321(08)00109-3
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:rensus:v:13:y:2009:i:5:p:1067-1073

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

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