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Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Energy System
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Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Energy System

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 July 2021) | Viewed by 17320

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Maurizio Cellura

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Engineering, University of Palermo, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Interests: building physics; life cycle assessment; circular economy; eco-design
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Francesco Guarino

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Engineering, University of Palermo, Viale delle Scienze, Edifico 9, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Interests: life cycle assessment; ecodesign; net-zero energy buildings; environmental sustainability; sustainable buildings; renewable energy technologies
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Sonia Longo

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Engineering, University of Palermo, 90128 Palermo, Italy
Interests: circular economy; life cycle assessment; energy system
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We are inviting submissions to the Energies Special Issue on “Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Energy Systems”.

Reducing environmental impacts caused by human activities is one of the main challenges of our era. Since energy generation is currently one of the most carbon-intensive activities, its production and consumption should be based on sustainable energy systems. Environmental sustainability of energy systems is a complex task, that must be analyzed with a scientific approaches based on a life cycle perspective.

Life Cycle Assessment is a well-recognized methodology to fulfill this task and must be applied to systems for energy production, storage, recovery, consumption.

This Special Issue aims to collect the latest experiences of LCA applied to different types of energy systems in order to evaluate their environmental sustainability. 

As such, Energies has decided to devote a Special Issue on the subject of “Life cycle assessment of sustainable energy systems”, to bring together articles that focus on current advancements in energy life cycle oriented performances of energy systems. 

We are looking for original papers on innovative contributions, based on the (non exclusive) following topics:

Methodological advancements on the Life Cycle – oriented modeling of energy systems

Environmental Sustainability of energy systems

Eco-design of energy systems and solutions

Data quality and applications to life cycle assessment of energy systems

Case-studies

Life cycle thinking approach and evaluation of clean energy transition policies 

Prof. Dr. Maurizio Cellura
Dr. Francesco Guarino
Dr. Sonia Longo
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Methodological advancements in the life-cycle-oriented modeling of energy systems
  • Environmental sustainability of energy systems
  • Eco-design of energy systems and solutions
  • Data quality and applications to life cycle assessment of energy systems
  • Case studies
  • Theoretical life cycle approaches and evaluation of clean energy transition policies

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Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 8007 KiB  
Article
Life Cycle Environmental Assessment of Energy Valorization of the Residual Agro-Food Industry
by Maria Anna Cusenza, Maurizio Cellura, Francesco Guarino and Sonia Longo
Energies 2021, 14(17), 5491; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14175491 - 2 Sep 2021
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1908
Abstract
This study assesses the potential environmental impacts related to the energy valorization of agro-food industry waste thought the Life Cycle Assessment methodology (ISO 14040). The system examined consists of a real anaerobic digester coupled with a combined anaerobic digester and heat and power [...] Read more.
This study assesses the potential environmental impacts related to the energy valorization of agro-food industry waste thought the Life Cycle Assessment methodology (ISO 14040). The system examined consists of a real anaerobic digester coupled with a combined anaerobic digester and heat and power plant (AD-CHP) operating in Sicily. The analysis accounts for all the impacts occurring from the delivery of the biomass to the AD-CHP plant up to the electricity generation in the CHP. The main outcomes of the study include the eco-profile of the energy system providing electricity and the assessment of the contribution of each life cycle phase aimed at identifying the potential improvement area. The obtained results highlight that the direct emissions associated with the biogas combustion process in the CHP account for 66% of the impact on climate change, and feedstock transport contributes 64% to the impact on mineral, fossil fuels, and renewable depletion. The contribution to the impacts caused by the electricity consumption is relevant in many of the environmental categories examined. It ranges from a minimum of about 22% for climate change up to 82% for freshwater ecotoxicity. Then actions aimed at reducing electricity consumption can significantly improve the environmental performances of the energy system examined. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Energy System)
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11 pages, 1289 KiB  
Article
Life Cycle Assessment for Supporting Eco-Design: The Case Study of Sodium–Nickel Chloride Cells
by Sonia Longo, Maurizio Cellura, Maria Anna Cusenza, Francesco Guarino, Marina Mistretta, Domenico Panno, Claudia D’Urso, Salvatore Gianluca Leonardi, Nicola Briguglio, Giovanni Tumminia, Vincenzo Antonucci and Marco Ferraro
Energies 2021, 14(7), 1897; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14071897 - 30 Mar 2021
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 2916
Abstract
The European Union is moving towards a sustainable, decarbonized, and circular economy. It has identified seven key value chains in which to intervene, with the battery and vehicle value chain being one of them. Thus, actions and strategies for the sustainability of batteries [...] Read more.
The European Union is moving towards a sustainable, decarbonized, and circular economy. It has identified seven key value chains in which to intervene, with the battery and vehicle value chain being one of them. Thus, actions and strategies for the sustainability of batteries need to be developed. Since Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a strategic tool for evaluating environmental sustainability, this paper investigates its application to two configurations of a sodium–nickel chloride cell (planar and tubular), focusing on the active material and the anode, with the purpose of identifying the configuration characterized by the lowest environmental impacts. The results, based on a “from cradle to gate” approach, showed that the tubular cell performs better for all environmental impact categories measured except for particulate matter, acidification, and resource depletion. With nickel being the main contributor to these impact categories, future sustainable strategies need to be oriented towards the reduction/recovery of this material or the use of nickel coming from a more sustainable supply chain. The original contribution of the paper is twofold: (1) It enriches the number of case studies of LCAs applied to sodium/nickel chloride cells, adding to the few studies on these types of cells that can be found in the existing scientific literature. (2) The results identify the environmental hot spots (cell configuration and materials used) for improving the environmental footprint of batteries made from sodium/nickel chloride cells. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Energy System)
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16 pages, 30186 KiB  
Article
Effect of LCA Data Sources on GBRS Reference Values: The Envelope of an Italian Passive House
by Elisabetta Palumbo
Energies 2021, 14(7), 1883; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14071883 - 29 Mar 2021
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2266
Abstract
Scientific literature provides evidence that mitigating the effects of a building’s operation does not in itself ensure an overall improvement in its environmental performance. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) plays a key role in gauging the overall environmental performance of a building although [...] Read more.
Scientific literature provides evidence that mitigating the effects of a building’s operation does not in itself ensure an overall improvement in its environmental performance. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) plays a key role in gauging the overall environmental performance of a building although several authors argue that the lack of LCA threshold values makes it difficult to compare design options or measure whether reduced impact targets are achieved. This has led the Green Building Rating Systems (GBRS) to include the LCA within their evaluation criteria and, in like Active House (AH), establish threshold values of the main impact categories to quantify the level of performance achieved. Since the reliability of the data sources is a crucial issue for applying the LCA method, the effectiveness of their implementation within the GBRS also strictly depends on the origin of the impact values. To quantify the extent to which the source affects the impacts calculated by the LCA threshold value in AH, the present study compared the outcomes of two assessments carried out in parallel using two different data sources: AH–LCA evaluation tool v.1.6 and the Environmental Product Declaration (EPD). A Passive House (PH)-compliant, small residential building was selected as a case study, as this is a standard that excels in ultra-low-energy performance. Moreover, given the crucial role that the envelope plays in the PH standard, the analysis was undertaken on the envelope of a PH-compliant building located in Northern Italy. To stress the influence of embedded effects in a Passive House, the assessment focused on the production and end-of-life stages of building materials. The comparison showed a relevant difference between the two scenarios for all the environmental indicators: e.g., deviations of 10% for Global Warming Potential, 20% for Acidification Potential and Eutrophication Potential, and 40–50% for Renewable Primary Energy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Energy System)
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26 pages, 9884 KiB  
Article
Considering Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Power System Expansion Planning for Europe and North Africa Using Multi-Objective Optimization
by Tobias Junne, Karl-Kiên Cao, Kim Kira Miskiw, Heidi Hottenroth and Tobias Naegler
Energies 2021, 14(5), 1301; https://doi.org/10.3390/en14051301 - 27 Feb 2021
Cited by 18 | Viewed by 3225
Abstract
We integrate life cycle indicators for various technologies of an energy system model with high spatiotemporal detail and a focus on Europe and North Africa. Using multi-objective optimization, we calculate a pareto front that allows us to assess the trade-offs between system costs [...] Read more.
We integrate life cycle indicators for various technologies of an energy system model with high spatiotemporal detail and a focus on Europe and North Africa. Using multi-objective optimization, we calculate a pareto front that allows us to assess the trade-offs between system costs and life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of future power systems. Furthermore, we perform environmental ex-post assessments of selected solutions using a broad set of life cycle impact categories. In a system with the least life cycle GHG emissions, the costs would increase by ~63%, thereby reducing life cycle GHG emissions by ~82% compared to the cost-optimal solution. Power systems mitigating a substantial part of life cycle GHG emissions with small increases in system costs show a trend towards a deployment of wind onshore, electricity grid and a decline in photovoltaic plants and Li-ion storage. Further reductions are achieved by the deployment of concentrated solar power, wind offshore and nuclear power but lead to considerably higher costs compared to the cost-optimal solution. Power systems that mitigate life cycle GHG emissions also perform better for most impact categories but have higher ionizing radiation, water use and increased fossil fuel demand driven by nuclear power. This study shows that it is crucial to consider upstream GHG emissions in future assessments, as they represent an inheritable part of total emissions in ambitious energy scenarios that, so far, mainly aim to reduce direct CO2 emissions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Energy System)
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27 pages, 3232 KiB  
Article
Life Cycle Assessment of Classic and Innovative Batteries for Solar Home Systems in Europe
by Federico Rossi, Maria Laura Parisi, Sarah Greven, Riccardo Basosi and Adalgisa Sinicropi
Energies 2020, 13(13), 3454; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13133454 - 3 Jul 2020
Cited by 21 | Viewed by 5041
Abstract
This paper presents an environmental sustainability assessment of residential user-scale energy systems, named solar home systems, encompassing their construction, operation, and end of life. The methodology adopted is composed of three steps, namely a design phase, a simulation of the solar home systems’ [...] Read more.
This paper presents an environmental sustainability assessment of residential user-scale energy systems, named solar home systems, encompassing their construction, operation, and end of life. The methodology adopted is composed of three steps, namely a design phase, a simulation of the solar home systems’ performance and a life cycle assessment. The analysis aims to point out the main advantages, features, and challenges of lithium-ion batteries, considered as a benchmark, compared with other innovative devices. As the environmental sustainability of these systems is affected by the solar radiation intensity during the year, a sensitivity analysis is performed varying the latitude of the installation site in Europe. For each site, both isolated and grid-connected solar home systems have been compared considering also the national electricity mix. A general overview of the results shows that, regardless of the installation site, solid state nickel cobalt manganese and nickel cobalt aluminium lithium-ion batteries are the most suitable choices in terms of sustainability. Remarkably, other novel devices, like sodium-ion batteries, are already competitive with them and have great potential. With these batteries, the solar home systems’ eco-profile is generally advantageous compared to the energy mix, especially in on-grid configurations, with some exceptions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Life Cycle Assessment of Sustainable Energy System)
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