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Energy System Pathways with Low Environmental Impacts and Limited Costs: Minimizing Climate Change Impacts Produces Environmental Cobenefits and Challenges in Toxicity and Metal Depletion Categories.
Journal article

Energy System Pathways with Low Environmental Impacts and Limited Costs: Minimizing Climate Change Impacts Produces Environmental Cobenefits and Challenges in Toxicity and Metal Depletion Categories.

  • Vandepaer L Interdisciplinary Research Laboratory on Sustainable Engineering and Ecodesign (LIRIDE), Civil and Building Engineering Department, Sherbrooke University, 2500 Boul. de l'Université, Sherbrooke, Québec J1K 2R1, Canada.
  • Panos E Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis, Paul Scherrer Institute, CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland.
  • Bauer C Laboratory for Energy Systems Analysis, Paul Scherrer Institute, CH-5232 Villigen, Switzerland.
  • Amor B Interdisciplinary Research Laboratory on Sustainable Engineering and Ecodesign (LIRIDE), Civil and Building Engineering Department, Sherbrooke University, 2500 Boul. de l'Université, Sherbrooke, Québec J1K 2R1, Canada.
  • 2020-03-14
Published in:
  • Environmental science & technology. - 2020
Air Pollution
Climate Change
Environment
Humans
Metals
Switzerland
English Environmental indicators based on the life cycle assessment method are integrated into an energy system model. This integration allows for the generation of comprehensive environmental assessments of future energy systems and for determining energy scenarios with less environmental impacts and moderate cost increases. In Switzerland, which is used as a case study to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach, it is possible to generate pathways with a 5% cost increase on the cost-optimal situation, causing an impact score for climate change that is 2% higher than the minimum feasible solution. The minimization of life-cycle impacts on climate change generates substantial environmental cobenefits with regard to human health, air pollution, ozone depletion, acidification, and land transformation. However, this minimization also creates trade-offs that exacerbate the effects of metal depletion and human toxicity caused by upstream extraction and manufacturing linked to technologies such as solar panels and electric vehicles. Finally, ambitious reduction targets of 95% direct (i.e., within the country) CO2 emissions for the year 2050 might still result in substantial climate change impacts should emissions embodied in the infrastructure and upstream supply chain not be jointly mitigated jointly.
Language
  • English
Open access status
closed
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://sonar.ch/global/documents/92956
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