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Life Cycle Assessment of Renewable Energy Sources

A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "B: Energy and Environment".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (29 February 2020) | Viewed by 10565

Special Issue Editors


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Department of Engineering, Energy Section, University of Palermo, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Interests: acoustic measurement; applied physics; HVAC; sea wave; renewable energy; energy efficiency; marine energies
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The journal Energies is delighted to announce the Special Issue “Life Cycle Assessment of Renewable Energy Sources”, examining the life cycle assessment (LCA) of different types of renewable energy: solar energy, wind energy, ocean energy (e.g., wave and tidal energy), solar energy in sea offshore applications.

In recent years, the marine energy industry has experienced an increasing level of interest and activity in the development of a broad range of technologies, involving blue skies research, the commercialization of marine energy conversion technologies, sea tests of devices, array deployments, and the design of new concepts. This Special Issue aims to capture the latest advances in marine energy application research and development, which will accelerate the implementation of new technologies and the expansion of the industry on a global scale.

We invite all researchers active in the broad and fascinating domain of LCA of renewable energy sources to submit articles to this Special Issue.

Prof. Dr. Vincenzo Franzitta
Prof. Dr. Marzia Traverso
Dr. Domenico Curto
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • LCA of wave energy
  • LCA of tidal energy
  • LCA of offshore wind energy
  • LCA of multi-platform concepts
  • LCA of arrays of energy converters

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

17 pages, 1946 KiB  
Article
Environmental Impact Evaluation of Distributed Renewable Energy System Based on Life Cycle Assessment and Fuzzy Rough Sets
by Chengzhou Li, Ningling Wang, Hongyuan Zhang, Qingxin Liu, Youguo Chai, Xiaohu Shen, Zhiping Yang and Yongping Yang
Energies 2019, 12(21), 4214; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12214214 - 5 Nov 2019
Cited by 24 | Viewed by 6126
Abstract
The distributed renewable energy system, integrating various renewable energy resources, is a significant energy supply technology within energy internet. It is an effective way to meet increasingly growing demand for energy conservation and environmental damage reduction in energy generation and energy utilization. In [...] Read more.
The distributed renewable energy system, integrating various renewable energy resources, is a significant energy supply technology within energy internet. It is an effective way to meet increasingly growing demand for energy conservation and environmental damage reduction in energy generation and energy utilization. In this paper, the life cycle assessment (LCA) method and fuzzy rough sets (FRS) theory are combined to build an environmental evaluation model for a distributed renewable energy system. The ReCiPe2016 method is selected to calculate the environmental effect scores of the distributed energy system, and the FRS is utilized to identify the crucial activities and exchanges during its life cycle from cradle to grave. The generalized evaluation method is applied to a real-world case study, a typical distributed energy system located in Yanqing District, Beijing, China, which is composed of wind power, small-scale hydropower, photovoltaic, centralized solar thermal power plant and a biogas power plant. The results show that the environmental effect of per kWh power derived from the distributed renewable energy system is 2.06 × 10−3 species disappeared per year, 9.88 × 10−3 disability-adjusted life years, and 1.75 × 10−3 USD loss on fossil resources extraction, and further in the uncertainty analysis, it is found that the environmental load can be reduced effectively and efficiently by improving life span and annual utilization hour of power generation technologies and technology upgrade for wind turbine and photovoltaic plants. The results show that the proposed evaluation method could fast evaluate the environmental effects of a distributed energy system while the uncertainty analysis with FRS successfully and effectively identifies the key element and link among its life span. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Life Cycle Assessment of Renewable Energy Sources)
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23 pages, 2754 KiB  
Article
Life Cycle Assessment of Low-Rank Coal Utilization for Power Generation and Energy Transportation
by Leidong Yuan and Cheng Xu
Energies 2019, 12(12), 2365; https://doi.org/10.3390/en12122365 - 19 Jun 2019
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 3171
Abstract
In China, the electricity load is concentrated in the east, but low-rank coal resources are concentrated in the west. To solve this contradiction, in this study, three cases for energy transmission about power system with and without solar energy were studied by life [...] Read more.
In China, the electricity load is concentrated in the east, but low-rank coal resources are concentrated in the west. To solve this contradiction, in this study, three cases for energy transmission about power system with and without solar energy were studied by life cycle assessment (LCA). Case 1 directly combusts low-rank coal to generate electricity in western China and transmits it to eastern China by grid. Cases 2 and 3 upgrade low-rank coal and transport it to eastern China for power generation. With the evaluating indicators and various stages of LCA, the impact of each case on the environment was compared clearly. The results show that over 90% of the pollutant emission comes from coal combustion throughout the life cycle. The pollutant emission of upgraded coal transportation is less than 5%. With low-rank coal upgrading then combusting, the total emission is less than that of direct combustion. In particular, with solar energy added, the emission of combustion can be further reduced. On the bases of LCA, analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to establish the connection of these four evaluation indicators to comprehensively evaluate the performance of the three cases through the objective function of AHP, which provided guidance for the energy transmission and utilization in the eastern and western China. Finally, sensitive analysis shows the main major factors affecting system performance on the system. The results show that the Case 3, which integrates with solar energy, performs best in the whole life scale. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Life Cycle Assessment of Renewable Energy Sources)
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