Investigating a Retrofit Thermal Power Plant from a Sustainable Environment Perspective—A Fuel Lifecycle Assessment Case Study

Yihsuan Wu and Jian Hua
Additional contact information
Yihsuan Wu: Department of Accounting, Soochow University, Taipei 101, Taiwan
Jian Hua: Department of Marine Engineering, National Taiwan Ocean University, Keelung 202, Taiwan

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 8, 1-26

Abstract: Retrofitting thermal power plants is a valuable opportunity to guide Taiwan’s electricity generation towards sustainability. Using an existing power plant nearing decommissioning as a case study, we hypothesized about fuel source options for retrofitting the power plant and compared the resulting impact on lifecycle atmospheric emissions. Our use of the lifecycle assessment (LCA) methodology reflected Taiwan’s heavy reliance on the imports and shipping of primary energy sources. We found that after accounting for the contribution of liquefaction and regasification (17%), gas-fired electricity still has significantly lower lifecycle greenhouse gases (GHGs) than coal or fuel oil (FO). In addition, we found that if natural gas (NG) is selected to achieve the greenhouse gas reduction of thermal power, the co-benefit of air pollution reduction can also be achieved at the same time.

Keywords: atmospheric emissions; greenhouse gases; air pollution; LCA; lifecycle assessment; thermal power plant; natural gas (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/8/4556/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/8/4556/ (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:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:8:p:4556-:d:791427

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

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