The life-cycle assessment and environmental impacts of electricity production in Porto Santo Island

Abstract

This article aims at assessing the environmental life-cycle impacts of electricity generation in Porto Santo island. Three different existing technologies are taken into account in this assessment: a central thermal power plant, photovoltaic systems and windmills. For each technology, the life-cycle assessment methodology is applied to quantify the environmental impacts for the following categories: non-renewable fossil energy demand, global warming, abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, photochemical oxidation and ozone layer depletion. Furthermore, two different scenarios are considered in terms of high penetration of renewables in the future, thus the result of environmental impact categories are demonstrated for each scenario. The result presents that for both considered scenarios an increment of the renewable in the energy mix of Porto Santo (50% of penetration of renewables) would lead to an important decrement in the environmental impacts (for most of the intended categories up to 40% of reduction is achieved).