This study compares the environmental air emissions external costs of electric, gasoline, and diesel private passenger cars during their entire life cycle. The results provide the decision makers with a complementary and unconventional interpretation of the results of an ISO 14040–compliant life cycle assessment (LCA). Indeed, LCA results are often difficult to communicate and to be understood by the general public; on the other hand, an environmental external costs evaluation, where a single monetary value synthesizes the environmental impacts, can be easily understood, communicated to the broad public, and compared with taxes, incentives, and other economic tools. In the present study, we demonstrate that it is possible to carry out the application of a damage factor to the physical inventory flow. The application of this methodology to an Italian context leads to the conclusion that if we compare the 3 types of vehicles—electric, diesel, and gasoline—of an average midsize car (e.g., Volkswagen Golf), the electric version produces less external cost than the traditional internal combustion engine vehicles, considering both air pollution and climate change. The total life cycle air emissions externalities are 12.07 €/1000 km for the electric version, 21.30 €/1000 km for the gasoline vehicle, and 24.25 €/1000 km for the diesel vehicle. At the same time, the electric vehicle produces less external cost related to the air emissions considering both the entire life cycle and only the processes that occur in Italy. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2019;00:1–11. © 2019 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC)
Electrochemical storage systems are an enabling solution for the electric system ecological transition, allowing a deeper penetration of nonprogrammable renewable energy resources, such as wind and solar energy. Lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) are state of the art energy storage technology. Nevertheless, LIBs show critical problems linked to their production, especially for what concerns energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, and rare raw materials use. Finding alternative storage technologies seems crucial for support energy transition, but at the same time, it is important to study their sustainability from the very beginning of their technological development. Using this framework, this paper presents a life cycle based environmental-economic assessment, comparing Na-ion coin cells (Ti1Al1TiC1.85 MXene as anode material) with LIBs. LCA results show that the assessed Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) are less environmentally friendly than LIBs, an outcome driven by the SIBs’ lower energy density. However, if results are shown by mass, SIBs can represent potential alternatives to LIBs. On the other hand, the analysis shows that even Na-ions already use less critical resources, both in absolute and in relative values, highlighting the need, at least for the European Union, to find valid alternatives to LIBs if the 2050 decarbonization targets are to be met.
The need for a quick and radical green transition gives a key role to the financial system as the main source to fund the change. This debate also involves the development of banking regulation tools able to serve the transition. Building on previous works, we propose a method to weight banks’ assets that combines conventional financial risks and environmental risks to calculate prudential capital requirements, and we apply it to the EU Taxonomy’s technical screening criteria to build an environmental risk indicator based on the buildings’ energy consumptions. We show how to calculate the tool endogenously for the taxonomy sections related to buildings (new construction, purchase of building, renovation), thus proving its immediate enforceability, using data from the Lombardy’s housing stocks. Finally, we conduct a stress test for the Italian banking system showing that our proposal would be an effective incentive for the banks to fund the green transition of the construction sector. Disclaimer: The views expressed are those of the authors and do not involve the responsibility of the Bank of Italy or RSE.
This study defines a methodology for the development of an economic indicator of natural resource use to be applied in the framework of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology to integrate the assessment of the environmental performances of products or processes during their life-cycle. The indicator developed-called Commodity Life Cycle Costing (or C-LCC)-is based on market prices, therefore incorporating information from both the demand and supply sides. Monte Carlo analysis is used to take price volatility into account. Alternative versions of the indicator, based on open-source data or calculated considering European Union’s critical raw materials only, are also developed. The study also provides a comparison between the C-LCC indicator and ReCiPe’s Mineral and Fossil Resource Depletion indicators and applies the proposed methodology to several types of batteries for stationary energy storage.
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