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External Costs as Indicator for the Environmental Performance of Power Systems

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Progress in Life Cycle Assessment 2018

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Abstract

Power system planning progressively demands integrated assessment methodologies to meet the requirements of environmental sustainability goals. An approach to include environmental impacts into power system decision procedures is the use of external costs. To investigate the applicability of external costs for the environmental assessment of power systems, we integrate external costs into the method of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) on the case of power generation technologies. The correlation between the LCA results considering external costs on the one hand and on the other hand standard midpoint impact assessment is investigated by regression analysis. We found that eutrophication (marine and terrestrial), acidification, photochemical ozone creation, respiratory effects and climate change show correlation (R2 = 0.97–0.66). In contrast, the categories concerning land and resource use are not correlating. The correlation mainly depends on the elementary flows which are accounted for. External costs lack in including the variety of elementary flows which are considered in the midpoint assessment. An application of external costs as sole impact indicator of power systems is not recommendable at the current state of development and further research activity for the use in LCA is proposed.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    ReCiPe is also available as endpoint method (derived from the midpoint assessment) but is commonly used on the midpoint level.

  2. 2.

    LIME includes midpoint categories which are derived from the endpoint methodology.

  3. 3.

    Ecosense web tool can be assessed online http://ecoweb.ier.uni-stuttgart.de/EcoSenseLE/current/index.php.

  4. 4.

    Acidification, ecosystem human and ecosystem ionizing radiation, marine and terrestrial eutrophication, ozone depletion potential, photochemical ozone creation, respiratory effects.

  5. 5.

    For land use negative impacts occur and therefore log-transformation is not used. The result is validated with log-transformed data excluding negative values.

  6. 6.

    Full Life Cycle Impact Assessment results for the 22 electricity generation technologies can be found in the Electronic Supplementary Material including the ILCD midpoint impact categories and the external cost implementation (XTCosts).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Industrial Ecology (INEC), Pforzheim University, Tiefenbronner Str. 65, 75175, Pforzheim, Germany

    Lukas Lazar & Ingela Tietze

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  1. Lukas Lazar
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  2. Ingela Tietze
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Correspondence to Lukas Lazar .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Accounting and Information Systems, University of Osnabrueck, Osnabrück, Niedersachsen, Germany

    Frank Teuteberg

  2. Deutsche Bundesstiftung Umwelt, Osnabrück, Niedersachsen, Germany

    Maximilian Hempel

  3. Department of Material Flow Management and Resource Economy, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

    Liselotte Schebek

1 Electronic Supplementary Material

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Lazar, L., Tietze, I. (2019). External Costs as Indicator for the Environmental Performance of Power Systems. In: Teuteberg, F., Hempel, M., Schebek, L. (eds) Progress in Life Cycle Assessment 2018. Sustainable Production, Life Cycle Engineering and Management. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12266-9_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-12266-9_7

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