A process systems engineering view of environmental impact assessment in renewable and sustainable energy production: Status and perspectives

With the increasing concern for climate change, renewable and sustainable energy production has attracted considerable attention from the scientific community, industrial practitioners, and policy and decision-makers. There are many technological alternatives for each sub-category of complex sustainable energy systems. Life cycle assessment (LCA) can be an effective tool to compare the environmental impacts of each pathway and identify the most promising alternatives from an environmental impact perspective. This contribution first reviews the environmental assessment methods and tools developed over the years. Secondly, a comprehensive review of the contribution of the PSE community to the environmental impact analysis of renewable energy systems is performed. It is observed that while LCA is the preferred method, these studies differed widely concerning the choice of impact assessment method used, the level of details shared concerning the underlying LCA calculations, and whether or not sensitivity and uncertainty analyses were carried out, among many others. This makes the comparison of results from different studies difficult and often impossible. It is clear that the PSE community, with its emphasis on systems thinking and holistic approaches, plays a critical role in the design, integration, and operation of complex sustainable energy systems. However, the thorough calculations necessary to ensure a robust and transparent LCA analysis require a shared methodology and a detailed description of the rules. Such explicit, systematic, and transparent methods will set the bar for a minimum requirement for thorough LCA calculations, ensuring fair comparison and discussions of different technical solutions developed in the wider PSE community for sustainable renewables.