A Prospective Net Energy and Environmental Life-Cycle Assessment of the UK Electricity Grid

Abstract

National Grid, the UK’s largest utility company, has produced a number of energy transition scenarios, among which “2 degrees” is the most aggressive in terms of decarbonization. This paper presents the results of a combined prospective net energy and environmental life cycle assessment of the UK electricity grid, based on such a scenario. The main findings are that the strategy is effective at drastically reducing greenhouse gas emissions (albeit to a reduced degree with respect to the projected share of “zero carbon” generation taken at face value), but it entails a trade-off in terms of depletion of metal resources. The grid’s potential toxicity impacts are also expected to remain substantially undiminished with respect to the present. Overall, the analysis indicates that the “2 degrees” scenario is environmentally sound and that it even leads to a modest increase in the net energy delivered to society by the grid (after accounting for the energy investments required to deploy all technologies).

Life-Cycle Carbon Emissions and Energy Implications of High Penetration of Photovoltaics and Electric Vehicles in California

“…In this study, in order to integrate the LCA and NEA approaches [10,12,13,15,17], when the EROI of electricity is calculated, all the energy investments at the denominator are accounted for in terms of their respective life-cycle CED, and they are expressed in units of oil-equivalent.…”

“…Analysing the system as a whole is important because the grid's overall impacts depend not only on the technologies that comprise it, but also on the location, the specific electricity demand profile and the associated requirement for energy storage, as evidenced in recent analyses [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17].…”

Life-Cycle Carbon Emissions and Energy Return on Investment for 80% Domestic Renewable Electricity with Battery Storage in California (U.S.A.)

“…In this study, in order to integrate the LCA and NEA viewpoints, and to maximize the consistency of the calculations, both internally and externally with some of the more recent literature [10,12,13,15,17], when calculating the EROI of electricity (either produced by a specific technology, or by the grid mix as a whole), all energy investments at the denominator are always accounted for in terms of their respective life-cycle CED (and are thus quantified in units of oil-equivalent).…”

“…It is also worth noting that it is important to assess each electricity grid as a whole, including all the electricity generation, transmission and storage technologies, and estimate the associated overall environmental impacts and energy implications, as discussed in some recent studies [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17].…”

The UK Approach to Greater Market Acceptance of Powered Light Vehicles (PLVs)

“…Reductions were also seen in the scenarios showing the modal shift for PM 10 and PM 2.5 (from 0.093 to 0.087 kg/day and 0.051 to 0.048 kg/day, respectively). Emissions relate to the carbon intensity of the electricity grid, and the increasingly renewable content of the UK grid mix (50% in 2019 [6]) means that considerable further reductions may be anticipated in future. Furthermore, the modelled scenarios also found that congestion levels decreased, resulting in reduced delays and shorter journey times for everyone across nine real world junctions (a 20% modal shift gave an 18.4 s reduction in delay averaged across all junctions improving to 39.8 s for a 50% modal shift).…”