Abstract
We investigate the potential environmental impacts of a large-scale adoption of wind power to meet up to 22% of the world’s growing electricity demand. The analysis builds on life cycle assessments of generic onshore and offshore wind farms, meant to represent average conditions for global deployment of wind power. We scale unit-based findings to estimate aggregated emissions of building, operating and decommissioning wind farms toward 2050, taking into account changes in the electricity mix in manufacturing. The energy scenarios investigated are the International Energy Agency’s BLUE scenarios. We estimate 1.7–2.6 Gt CO2-eq climate change, 2.1–3.2 Mt N-eq marine eutrophication, 9.2–14 Mt NMVOC photochemical oxidant formation, and 9.5–15 Mt SO2-eq terrestrial acidification impact category indicators due to global wind power in 2007–50. Assuming lifetimes 5 yr longer than reference, the total climate change indicator values are reduced by 8%. In the BLUE Map scenario, construction of new capacity contributes 64%, and repowering of existing capacity 38%, to total cumulative greenhouse gas emissions. The total emissions of wind electricity range between 4% and 14% of the direct emissions of the replaced fossil-fueled power plants. For all impact categories, the indirect emissions of displaced fossil power are larger than the total emissions caused by wind power.
Highlights
In recent years, increasing concerns over security of energy supply and harmful climate change have fueled interest in the development of renewable energy technologies
The procedure is repeated for every year, so that the electricity mix used in the entire life cycle assessment (LCA) database and IO background systems is always consistent with the International Energy Agency (IEA) scenarios
Metal requirements for all components, as well as composites used in the rotor blades and nacelle, concrete used in the foundations, and electricity used by foreground processes, are modeled in the LCA database background system
Summary
In recent years, increasing concerns over security of energy supply and harmful climate change have fueled interest in the development of renewable energy technologies. Electric power generation by wind turbines is a fast-growing technology, with global installed capacity growing at an average annual rate of around 25% over the past ten years [1]. Typically foreseen paths to renewable energy supply and climate stabilization imply a massive expansion of the wind power industry and its supply network in coming decades. Despite the renewable nature of wind energy conversion, non-renewable resource inputs and emissions occur in the life cycle of wind energy systems. Climate change mitigation scenario analyses explore pathways leading to decarbonized energy supply at the economy-wide level, but do not take into account the greenhouse gas emissions in the production of the power plants; while conventional, unit-based
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