Authors
HARTMANN, Didier; TEIXEIRA, Maxime
Abstract
Climate change should trigger decisions regarding a strengthening of decarbonized energies. It is important to have strong arguments to justify the choice of the best energy mix, which is not the same depending on the countries involved and available technologies. Life cycle assessment (LCA) uses tools that can help to define a successful energy transition by including a panel of indicators encompassing all environmental compartments. An LCA of the different sources of electricity was performed based on inventories from literature and implemented technologies, leading to an environmental ranking of the different energies through midpoints and endpoints with the nowadays inventories. Indeed, due to large uncertainties of the inventories of rapidly evolving technologies for a number of technologies (wind and solar energies), static LCA was used as a simplified tool. As an example, four scenarios of energy transition corresponding to different energy demands up to 2050 were chosen and compared in terms of LCA. As environmental assessment alone is not enough to choose between different energy mix options, several multicriteria indicators were proposed for a new methodology to follow a sustainable development strategy, i.e. including several economic (Levelized Cost of Energy) and societal (perceived industrial risk, human health and number of direct jobs) parameters. The scenarios were submitted to a multicriteria sustainable assessment in order to obtain a ranking based on tuneable parameters, depending on different stakeholders’ viewpoints (investors, authorities, population). A spreadsheet is proposed to integrate all the parameters, helping the decision-makers to be informed about the consequences of their choice. Finally, the impact of the electricity production sector is put in perspective with the energy transition objectives.