Comparing Life-Cycle Environmental Impacts and Costs of Electricity Generation Systems

What are the all-in costs—environmental and economic—of expanding and operating an electrical grid for Texas, and how might these costs change over the next 30 years? Can we quantify trade-offs among society’s goals of (1) providing reliable and affordable energy; (2) mitigating climate change; and (3) ensuring affordability for consumers? These trade-offs can be evaluated through comparative life-cycle assessments (LCA) of different generation systems that feature 18 different environmental pathways, including greenhouse gases (CO2eq) and local emissions (particulate matter, SOX, NOX); land and water use and pollution; and biodiversity and ecosystem impacts. These LCA analyses consider extraction of natural resources (gas, minerals, etc.), manufacturing of generation equipment, power plant operations, and end-of-life options (e.g., landfilling or recycling of equipment).

In this talk, we’ll show how environmental impacts manifest along global supply chains for materials (e.g., lithium, cobalt, etc.) at different times during the 30-year lifespan of facilities that support energy development. We connect every operating facility, using different generation mixes, in a nodal-scale, grid dispatch model that allows us to track grid reliability (goal #1), improvements in environmental performance (goal #2), and differences in consumer cost of electricity (goal #3). The results show the complicated nature of impacts along the global supply chain of materials needed for energy development and electricity generation, and they point to areas where impacts can be mitigated through innovation and action.