Life cycle burden-shifting in energy systems designed to minimize greenhouse gas emissions: Novel analytical method and application to the United States
Author(s)
Algunaibet, Ibrahim M
Guillén-Gosálbez, Gonzalo
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Energy systems are currently designed focusing only on minimizing their cost or, at most, including limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Unfortunately, electricity technologies performing well in global warming potential might not necessarily behave equally well across other sustainability criteria. Hence, policies focused solely on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions could potentially resolve one problem (i.e., climate change) by creating another, thereby leading to burden-shifting. Here, the occurrence and severity of burden-shifting in energy systems design are both investigated through the application of a novel approach integrating multi-objective optimization, life cycle assessment and multivariate regression based on elasticities. Environmental impacts are classified into three categories: no burden-shifting, total burden-shifting and partial burden-shifting, providing in turn for the latter two a measure of their severity. Due to inherent trade-offs in the life cycle performance of technologies, discussed in detail in this work, the Paris Agreement 2 ˚C targets would lead to burden-shifting in the United States (total or partial) in up to eight environmental impacts. On the other hand, stringent carbon emissions reductions in line with the 1.5 ˚C targets can lead to burden-shifting in three environmental impacts. Indeed, in both cases undesirable increases in some damage categories of up to 1.64% for every percentage increase in cost due to stringent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions compared to the least cost solution. Overall, this work aims to foster fruitful discussions on how to generate energy within the Earth’s ecological capacity by expanding the analysis beyond climate change.
Date Issued
2019-08-20
Date Acceptance
2019-04-22
Citation
Journal of Cleaner Production, 2019, 229, pp.886-901
ISSN
0959-6526
Publisher
Elsevier
Start Page
886
End Page
901
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Cleaner Production
Volume
229
Copyright Statement
© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This manuscript is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Licence http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Sponsor
Natural Environment Research Council (NERC)
Identifier
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0959652619313678?via%3Dihub
Grant Number
NE/P019900/1
Subjects
Science & Technology
Technology
Life Sciences & Biomedicine
Green & Sustainable Science & Technology
Engineering, Environmental
Environmental Sciences
Science & Technology - Other Topics
Engineering
Environmental Sciences & Ecology
Climate change
Elasticity
Energy systems modeling
IPAT
Life cycle assessment
STIRPAT
POWER-SYSTEMS
OPTIMIZATION
INTEGRATION
IMPACT
TIMES
Environmental Sciences
0907 Environmental Engineering
0910 Manufacturing Engineering
0915 Interdisciplinary Engineering
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2019-04-23