Adjustment of the Life Cycle Inventory in Life Cycle Assessment for the Flexible Integration into Energy Systems Analysis

Thomas Betten, Shivenes Shammugam and Roberta Graf
Additional contact information
Thomas Betten: Institute for Acoustics and Building Physics, University of Stuttgart, 70563 Stuttgart, Germany
Shivenes Shammugam: Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE), 79110 Freiburg, Germany
Roberta Graf: Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics (IBP), 70563 Stuttgart, Germany

Energies, 2020, vol. 13, issue 17, 1-19

Abstract: With an increasing share of renewable energy technologies in our energy systems, the integration of not only direct emission (from the use phase), but also the total life cycle emissions (including emissions during resource extraction, production, etc.) becomes more important in order to draw meaningful conclusions from Energy Systems Analysis (ESA). While the benefit of integrating Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) into ESA is acknowledged, methodologically sound integration lacks resonance in practice, partly because the dimension of the implications is not yet fully understood. This study proposes an easy-to-implement procedure for the integration of LCA results in ESA based on existing theoretical approaches. The need for a methodologically sound integration, including the avoidance of double counting of emissions, is demonstrated on the use case of Passivated Emitter and Rear Cell photovoltaic technology. The difference in Global Warming Potential of 19% between direct and LCA based emissions shows the significance for the integration of the total emissions into energy systems analysis and the potential double counting of 75% of the life cycle emissions for the use case supports the need for avoidance of double counting.

Keywords: life cycle assessment; energy system analysis; energy system modelling; decarbonisation; double counting; direct emissions; resource use (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: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/17/4437/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/17/4437/ (text/html)

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:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:17:p:4437-:d:405061

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().