Dynamic Life Cycle Analysis

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Over the past few posts, I have made some references to the use of Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) in determining the viability of the various Alternative Energy Technologies (AETs) that were discussed. For example, Sovacool (2008) compiled the life-cycle GHG emissions from various AETs as shown in Table 1 below. 

Table 1 - Sovacool (2008) : GHG Life-cycle Estimates for Electricity Generators

Meanwhile, Kenny et al (2010) suggested that a more advanced form of analysis called the dynamic LCA should be used as a gauge on the suitability of AETs to drive the optimization of electricity generation for effective climate change mitigation. 

The interesting feature of the dynamic LCA, is that it takes into account the growth rate of the technology, in addition to other critical factors such as emissions arising from plant operations as well as its construction phase. Table 2 below summarises their findings:

Table 2 - Kenny et al (2010) : Rankings of current technologies according to carbon-neutral growth rates

Electric energy technology	Carbon-neutral growth rate (%)
Geothermal	24
Wind	91
Biomass	50
Concentrating solar thermal	43
Small Hydro	43
Solar photovoltaic	41
Nuclear	22
Hydro	5
Natural gas combined cycle	−5*
Oil	−20*

The “carbon-neutral growth rate” is defined as the rate at which the aggregate carbon mitigation of an energy technology as a whole (eg, all wind power projects in the world) is offset by the carbon emitted in the construction of new plants. Negative carbon growth rates imply that adding capacity of that technology to the grid will result in an increase in GHG emissions per unit energy. 

It does not come as a surprise that fossil fuel technologies fare badly in the rankings. The results suggest that wind, biomass and solar AETs could be promising. 

Nonetheless, the authors have also acknowledged that further refinements could be made to their methodology such as the inclusion of economic principles. With these refinements, the new methodology could be of interest to potential investors and policy makers, and could potentially reshape future evaluations of AETs.