Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Inventory of Natural Gas Extraction, Delivery and Electricity Production

Life cycle analyses of bulk‐scale solid oxide fuel cell power plants and comparisons to the natural gas combined cycle

“…Reproduced with permission from Adams et al [11] Table 1. ReCiPe 2008 mid-and end-point factors and indication of their inclusion in this study [32] there is no singular LCA method that has been identified to be allencompassing, a common theme among most commonly accepted methodologies is to define a set of standardized metrics to categorize the impacts of products at the mid-point (such as climate change, ecotoxicity, or land occupation) and end-point (such as loss of human life and ecosystem degradation) levels. However, each model that attempts to characterize a product's life cycle impact contains underlying assumptions that lead to different results depending on the method used.…”

“…Example of a mid-point to end-point life cycle assessment strategy. Adapted from Skone et al [32] land transformation were also not considered because the environmental impact from occupying land required by the power plant is trivially small compared to the impacts of its heavy use throughout its lifetime. Ionizing radiation was not considered because nuclear energy plays only a tiny role in the supply chain in the form of the consumption of grid electricity during manufacturing processes and it was assumed that no radioactive components were emitted to the environment during this step.…”

“…Several government-initiated studies have recently been performed in the United States that inventory the impact of NGCC plants and their associated upstream processes. [31,32] Other investigations have been performed as well using various impact analysis methods and levels of detail (see Table 1 in Singh et al [33] and the references therein for a review of recent studies). However, at the time of this work, no studies have used the ReCiPe 2008 method to assess the end-point impact of these analyses.…”

“…Literature sources defining the "average" NG used in the United States and the life cycle impacts of each source were considered for this study. [31,32,37] A summary of the contributions of each NG source is provided in Table 2. It is assumed that 98 % of the final NG is from domestic sources, and 2 % is liquefied NG (LNG) imported from Trinidad and Tobago.…”

A bridge to nowhere: methane emissions and the greenhouse gas footprint of natural gas

“….. depends on the relative weight assigned to the effects at different times" [34]. The IPCC further concludes that at the 10-year timescale, the current global release of methane from all anthropogenic sources exceeds (slightly) all anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions as agents of global warming; that is, methane emissions are more important (slightly) than carbon dioxide emissions [35] 20 and 100 years 56 21 Hayhoe et al [2] 0-100 years NA NA Lelieveld et al [3] 20 and 100 years 56 21 Jamarillo et al [4] 100 years -21 IPCC [36] 20 and 100 years 72 25 Shindell et al [37] 20 and 100 years 105 33 Howarth et al [8] 20 and 100 years 105 33 Hughes [20] 20 and 100 years 105 33 Venkatesh et al [12] 100 years -25 Jiang et al [13] 100 years -25 Wigley [38] 0-100 years NA NA Stephenson et al [14] 100 years -25 Hultman et al [15] 20 and 100 years 72, 105 25, 44 Skone et al [39] 100 years -25 Burnham et al [16] 100 years -25 Cathles et al [17] 100 years -25 Alvarez et al [40] 0-100 years NA NA IPCC [34] 10, 20, and 100 years 86 34 Brandt et al [29] 100 years -25…”