Chapter Five - Environmental impact assessment of renewable power plants in the US

Abstract

Renewable electricity generation technologies provide a more sustainable solution than nonrenewables. However, as complete systems, renewable energy generation systems have impacts on humankind, resources, and ecosystems. This chapter will address the environmental effects of different types of renewable plants through life cycle assessment (LCA). A comparative study is performed among solar-photovoltaic (PV), biomass, and pumped storage hydropower plants in the US. Life cycle impact analysis has been carried out by the Eco-indicator 99, Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other Environmental Impacts (TRACI), Raw Material Flows (RMF), cumulative energy demand (CED), Eco-points 97, and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) methods, using SimaPro software. The impacts are considered based on 10 mid-point impact categories and 3 end-point indicators. The results show that pumped storage hydropower plants have the highest environmental impacts in the categories of global warming, ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, carcinogenics, and ecotoxicity, while biomass plants have higher impacts in the categories of smog and fossil fuel depletion. Moreover, pumped storage hydropower plants have the highest impact on human health (7.74E−05/kWh) and ecosystems (3.35E−06/kWh), whereas biomass plants have higher effects on resources (4.79E−07/kWh). Overall, solar-PV plants are found to be much more environment-friendly than other renewable electricity generation systems. These findings will guide investors in installing sustainable and clean power plants.