Life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of electricity generation in the province of Ontario, Canada

Mallia, E. A.; Lewis, George Cornewall

doi:10.1007/s11367-012-0501-0

Cited by 58 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Life cycle assessment can be used in order to determine the environmental costs of such initiatives. A common challenge with life cycle assessment studies is gaining access to publicly available and reliable data (Mallia and Lewis 2013). The specific data collected by public bodies concerned with energy as well as the CSO could be suitable resources for LCA and can contribute to considerably reducing the time and costs of carrying out such analyses.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle assessment of energy generation in Poland

Lelek

Kulczycka

Lewandowska

et al. 2015

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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Purpose The paper presents, for the first time, a life cycle assessment (LCA) study of energy generation (i.e. electricity and heat production) in Poland. The aim is to determine and compare the potential impact of energy generation upon the environment in 2007, 2010 and 2012 based on countryspecific data bought from specialised government agencies. Methods LCA evaluations were made using the Impact2002+ method, which proposes a feasible implementation of a combined midpoint/damage approach. The method was chosen because it models risks and potential impacts per emission for several thousand chemicals, including greenhouse gas (GHG). The LCA method was used to monitor and assess the current energy system and introduced changes in energy structure at national level. Results and discussion From the environmental perspective, the main problem of the Polish energy sector is that it is mainly based on fossil energy carriers, i.e. hard and brown coal (over 80 %). As the share of renewables in primary energy has increased from 6.7 to 10.2 % (mainly biomass), a reduction in SO 2 , NO x and dust was noted in 2010 in comparison to 2007. Unfortunately, acid and CO 2 emissions increased significantly in 2012 as a result of higher consumption of brown coal as a fuel for energy production. The LCA study shows that the total environmental impact of the production and distribution of 1 TJ of energy increased by about 4 % in 2010 (compared to 2007) and by about 11 % in 2012 (compared to 2010). Conclusions Specific representative data of high quality can be delivered by agencies focused on energy issues and the national statistical office. They can help to considerably reduce the time and costs of life cycle inventory (LCI). These data, including a classification relating to electricity and heat generation and distribution in Poland, were converted to LCA results for the first time. It was noted that allocation between heat and power in the CHP system can be recognised as a source of uncertainty, and the results should be interpreted as sensitive to change in the allocation criteria.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle assessment of energy generation in Poland

Lelek

Kulczycka

Lewandowska

et al. 2015

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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“…Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is a systematic tool for evaluating the environmental burdens associated with the entire life-cycle treatment of a product, process, or activity (ISO 14040 2006). LCA studies on CEP generation have been widely conducted worldwide (Kim and Bruce 2005;Di et al 2007;Jaramillo et al 2007;Xiao et al 2011;Weisser 2009;Whitaker et al 2012;Mallia and Lewis 2013;Zhang et al 2010;Weber et al 2010;Cui et al 2012;Liang et al 2013). Kim and Bruce (2005) and Di et al (2007) performed lifecycle inventory studies on the US electricity system and on Chinese electricity generation technologies, respectively.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the environmental impacts were not discussed. In addition, various power generation technologies were compared in America (Jaramillo et al 2007;Weber et al 2010;Whitaker et al 2012), China (Ou et al 2011;Xiao et al 2011), Austria (Weisser 2009), and Canada (Mallia and Lewis 2013;Zhang et al 2010). However, these studies only focused on the global warming impact.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Approaches for controlling air pollutants and their environmental impacts generated from coal-based electricity generation in China

Hong

Ren

et al. 2015

Environ Sci Pollut Res

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This study aims at qualifying air pollutants and environmental impacts generated from coal-based power plants and providing useful information for decision makers on the management of coal-based power plants in China. Results showed that approximately 9.03, 54.95, 62.08, and 12.12% of the national carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter emissions, respectively, in 2011were generated from coal-based electricity generation. The air pollutants were mainly generated from east China because of the well-developed economy and energy-intensive industries in the region. Coal-washing technology can simply and significantly reduce the environmental burden because of the relativity low content of coal gangue and sulfur in washed coal. Optimizing the efficiency of raw materials and energy consumption is additional key factor to reduce the potential environmental impacts. In addition, improving the efficiency of air pollutants (e.g., dust, mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides) control system and implementing the strict requirements on air pollutants for power plants are important ways for reducing the potential environmental impacts of coal-based electricity generation in China.

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“…In Canada, an average of 210 tonnes of CO 2 equivalent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions is produced for every gigawatt-hour of electrical energy (Mallia and Lewis, 2013). To reduce the GHG emissions, nuclear energy could be adopted.…”

Section: Fossil Fuel Emissions Abatement Costmentioning

confidence: 99%