Small steps towards energy poverty mitigation: Life cycle assessment and economic feasibility analysis of a photovoltaic and battery system in a Brazilian indigenous community

Abstract

The so-called energy transition has been associated with decreasing dependence on fossil fuel energy and low environmental impacts. Additionally, several communities worldwide still face energy poverty, with no or limited access to energy services. This paper evaluates the environmental and economic aspects related to replacing diesel-based power systems with photovoltaic and battery storage systems in a small indigenous community in northern Brazil. Nine environmental categories were analyzed for the life cycle perspective, from which it was established that the benefits of the photovoltaic system outperformed the diesel-based system in seven of the nine categories i.e., climate change (by a difference of 189.8 t CO2-eq over the system's lifetime, i.e., 300 MWh generated over 25 years), fossil depletion (by 66.7 t oil-eq), environmental toxicity (by 1.4 t 1,4-DCB-eq), particulate matter formation (by 1.5 t PM10-eq), photochemical oxidant formation (by 4.8 t NMVOC), terrestrial acidification (by 2.5 t SO2-eq), and eutrophication (by 1.7 t nutrients-eq). On the other hand, metal depletion showed similar values for both cases, while the diesel-based system was associated with lower human toxicity (by 14.8 t 1,4-DCB-eq) given the high usage of toxic metals when manufacturing the battery systems. Regarding the economic aspects, from stochastic analysis, the results for replacing diesel-based systems result in average savings of around 9 thousand USD over 25 years. Hopefully, these positive results might stimulate policy efforts that lead to mitigating energy poverty in Brazilian indigenous communities.