Life-Cycle Environmental Footprint Analysis of Electricity Generation Technologies

Abstract

Increasing urbanization and global population, in addition to huge economic and industrial developments have jointly led to raised consumption of electrical. With the rise in fossil-based fuel costs and the environmental awareness to decrease greenhouse gas emissions there is an increasing requirement to alter away from CO2 emission creating fossil-based fuels to new renewable power resources for electrical generation. By using Life Cycle Assessment, this paper’s scope is to compare and evaluation the chosen environmental effects associated with the electrical generation of the sustainable and the fossil-based system. In this paper, the environmental footprint that obtains from the diverse energy sources’ exploitation/use, either renewable or conventional/fossil in the electrical generation industry, is analyzed. Analysis of the electrical energy generation sectors depended on diverse factors include a potency ecological effect categories’ wide vary. Thus, the energy sources’ diverse life cycle stages used in electrical generation are investigated. The pairwise comparison is presented for the needed data’ derivation. For each of criteria, these comparison is applied for deriving weights of criteria’ significance and alternatives’ relative rankings. Each technology’s ecological effect according to all factors are calculated. Finally, the eco-friendliest and the most environmentally damage technologies are determined.

Keywords

• Environmental footprint,electricity generation,emission,pollution

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