Sustainability assessment of alternative energy power generation pathways through the development of impact indicators for water, land, GHG emissions, and cost

Sustainability indicators are helpful factors to comparatively assess power generation pathways. This paper develops sustainability indicators for sixty alternative energy pathways. The selected indicators reflect the quantitative impacts of power generation on water, air, land, and levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). Indicators are harmonized at a specific conversion efficiency, developed per a functional power generation unit (MWh), and covering the cradle-to-gate boundary. The power generation stage of hydroelectricity has the most negative impact on the water consumption indicator of 68.18 m3/MWh, the highest land use indicator of 7.76 m2/MWh, and is simultaneously associated with the lowest GHG emissions indicator of 1.9 kg of CO2 eq./MWh. Sustainable scenarios are conducted in this study to identify the optimum pathways that have the lowest impacts on natural resources, GHG emissions, and the LCOE. The sustainable scenarios are executed under the annual power generation range 1-44 TWh to quantify the minimum required constraints of water, land, GHG emissions, and the LCOE. Power generation from geothermal flash technology with cooling tower and bio-oil with dry cooling showed the most sustainable pathways based on the boundaries of the cradle-to-gate and power generation stage, respectively. Centrifugal enrichment technology with dry cooling is the most sustainable among nuclear energy pathways, while flat-panel photovoltaic has shown the best sustainability among solar energy pathways.

Automated summary

This paper develops sustainability indicators for sixty alternative energy pathways and identifies the most sustainable pathways based on the quantitative impacts of power generation on water, air, land, and levelized cost of electricity (LCOE). The power generation stage of hydroelectricity has the most negative impact on water consumption and land use indicators, while having the lowest GHG emissions indicator. Geothermal flash technology with cooling tower and bio-oil with dry cooling are identified as the most sustainable pathways.