Renewable Energy Resources Technologies and Life Cycle Assessment: Review

Abstract

Moving towards RER has become imperative to achieve sustainable development goals (SDG). Renewable energy resources (RER) are characterized by uncertainty whereas, most of them are unpredictable and variable according to climatic conditions. This paper focuses on RER-based electrical power plants as a base to achieve two different goals, SDG7 (obtaining reasonably priced clean energy) and SDG13 (reducing climate change). These goals in turn would support other environmental, social, and economic SDG. This study is constructed based on two pillars which are technological developments and life cycle assessment (LCA) for wind, solar, biomass, and geothermal power plants. To support the study and achieve the main point, many essential topics are presented in brief such as fossil fuels’ environmental impact, economic sustainability linkage to RER, the current contribution of RER in energy consumption worldwide and barriers and environmental effects of RER under consideration. As a result, solar and wind energy lead the RER electricity market with major contributions of 27.7% and 26.92%, respectively, biomass and geothermal are still of negligible contributions at 4.68% and 0.5%, respectively, offshore HAWT dominated other WT techniques, silicon-based PV cells dominated other solar PV technologies with 27% efficiency, combustion thermochemical energy conversion process dominated other biomass energy systems techniques, due to many concerns geothermal energy system is not preferable. Many emerging technologies need to receive more public attention, intensive research, financial support, and governmental facilities including effective policies and data availability.

Environmental Assessment of Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant based on Exergy Allocation Factors for Heat and Electricity Production

“…As a general framework, LCA attempts to associate the emissions, resource extraction, and processes (i.e., inputs and outputs along the value chain) into environmental impact categories. The LCA approach has been widely recognized as a reference method that can be applied to the assessment of energy systems [7]. It has also demonstrated ap-plicability for providing comparisons of geothermal systems with other renewable energy technologies [10,18], and to ensure comparability among LCA results from geothermal energy systems of different types and sizes [14].…”

“…In particular, the LCA approach has been applied to geothermal energy units to provide a comprehensive analysis of the related environmental impacts [5,6]. On the one hand, the LCA approach has been widely applied to evaluate the environmental impact of geothermal energy conversion and its comparison with other renewable energy technologies (for instance, wind, solar, and biomass energy) [7][8][9]. On the other hand, the LCA approach also provides a reliable methodology to assess the environmental performance of geothermal system reference cases of different types and sizes [9,10].…”

Prospective life cycle assessment targeting the dual-carbon strategy: Progress review and methodological framework

“…图 2 1994-2023 年国内外研究文献发表年度趋势 http://www.resci.net 放 [26] 。电动汽车的发展也有助于减少对化石燃料的 依赖 [26,27] 。然而， 目前能源转型仍然存在成本较高、 技术不完善等问题。因此， 对相关领域新兴技术进 行前瞻性 LCA 评估和碳排放估算 [28] ， 从系统视角探 究技术降碳效力和发展前景， 有助于筛选可持续生 产、 低碳、 零碳、 负碳的新兴技术， 对指导新兴技术 在双碳目标下的发展和支撑循环经济战略 [29] 技术之间的对比 [37,38] 、 同一技术不同发展阶段的对 比 [39] 、 技术规模放大之后的影响评价 [40] 或识别新兴 技术的热点环节 [41] 等， 为新兴技术的开发和应用提…”

An Intelligent Regression-Based Approach for Predicting a Geothermal Heat Exchanger’s Behavior in a Bioclimatic House Context

“…In this context, renewable energy, including geothermal energy, emerges as a promising alternative to provide a clean and constant energy supply [2]. Unlike solar and wind energy, whose technologies have evolved significantly due to their popularity, geothermal energy still requires technological development and more efficient implementation [3], primarily in areas with suitable geological conditions.…”