• Energy Research
• 11. Sustainability close

In order to analyse long-term transformation pathways, energy system models generally focus on economical and technical characteristics. However, these models usually do not consider sustainability aspects such as environmental impacts. In contrast, life cycle assessment enables an extensive estimate of those impacts. Due to these complementary characteristics, the combination of energy system models and life cycle assessment thus allows comprehensive environmental sustainability assessments of technically and economically feasible energy system transformation pathways. We introduce FRITS, a FRamework for the assessment of environmental Impacts of Transformation Scenarios. FRITS links bottom-up energy system models with life cycle impact assessment indicators and quantifies the environmental impacts of transformation strategies of the entire energy system (power, heat, transport) over the transition period. We apply the framework to conduct an environmental assessment of multi-sectoral energy scenarios for Germany. Here, a ‘Target’ scenario reaching 80% reduction of energy-related direct CO2 emissions is compared with a ‘Reference’ scenario describing a less ambitious transformation pathway. The results show that compared to 2015 and the ‘Reference’ scenario, the ‘Target’ scenario performs better for most life cycle impact assessment indicators. However, the impacts of resource consumption and land use increase for the ‘Target’ scenario. These impacts are mainly caused by road passenger transport and biomass conversion.

We integrate life cycle indicators for various technologies of an energy system model with high spatiotemporal detail and a focus on Europe and North Africa. Using multi-objective optimization, we calculate a pareto front that allows us to assess the trade-offs between system costs and life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of future power systems. Furthermore, we perform environmental ex-post assessments of selected solutions using a broad set of life cycle impact categories. In a system with the least life cycle GHG emissions, the costs would increase by ~63%, thereby reducing life cycle GHG emissions by ~82% compared to the cost-optimal solution. Power systems mitigating a substantial part of life cycle GHG emissions with small increases in system costs show a trend towards a deployment of wind onshore, electricity grid and a decline in photovoltaic plants and Li-ion storage. Further reductions are achieved by the deployment of concentrated solar power, wind offshore and nuclear power but lead to considerably higher costs compared to the cost-optimal solution. Power systems that mitigate life cycle GHG emissions also perform better for most impact categories but have higher ionizing radiation, water use and increased fossil fuel demand driven by nuclear power. This study shows that it is crucial to consider upstream GHG emissions in future assessments, as they represent an inheritable part of total emissions in ambitious energy scenarios that, so far, mainly aim to reduce direct CO2 emissions.

The exploration and evaluation of strategies for decarbonizing the energy system is the subject of a series of national and international studies conducted by governmental, industrial and independent stakeholders. These studies play an important role in the energy policy debate on understanding and assessing different transformation paths of the energy system, technology options and their implications. They support strategic decisions on the type and scale of investments in the energy system under uncertain future conditions. However, in recent years the increasing complexity of these studies lead to a decreasing transparency even though their transparency and traceability is important for society, politics, research, and industry.In this article, three energy scenarios at different regional scales are reviewed according to their compliance with our pre-defined criteria of transparency. They are analysed in detail with regard to their objectives, methods, data used, results obtained and traceability. Our comparison shows that the results are often presented sufficiently in order to inform decision makers. However, the underlying model-based methods lack information on data exchange between the models, the transparent description of model couplings and a discussion on the rationality of method selection and the strengths and weaknesses of the applied approaches. Based on our findings, we present some general advice for energy scenario developers on how to ensure transparency and traceability in future energy scenario studies. Keywords: Energy scenario, Transparency, Reproducibility, Modelling approach, Impact

Sustainable development embraces a broad spectrum of social, economic and ecological aspects. Thus, a sustainable transformation process of energy systems is inevitably multidimensional and needs to go beyond climate impact and cost considerations. An approach for an integrated and interdisciplinary sustainability assessment of energy system transformation pathways is presented here. It first integrates energy system modeling with a multidimensional impact assessment that focuses on life cycle-based environmental and macroeconomic impacts. Then, stakeholders’ preferences with respect to defined sustainability indicators are inquired, which are finally integrated into a comparative scenario evaluation through a multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), all in one consistent assessment framework. As an illustrative example, this holistic approach is applied to the sustainability assessment of ten different transformation strategies for Germany. Applying multi-criteria decision analysis reveals that both ambitious (80%) and highly ambitious (95%) carbon reduction scenarios can achieve top sustainability ranks, depending on the underlying energy transformation pathways and respective scores in other sustainability dimensions. Furthermore, this research highlights an increasingly dominant contribution of energy systems’ upstream chains on total environmental impacts, reveals rather small differences in macroeconomic effects between different scenarios and identifies the transition among societal segments and climate impact minimization as the most important stakeholder preferences.

Abstract Extracting copper is energy-intensive. At the same time, copper is a key material for building the energy systems of the future. Both facts call for clean copper production. The present work addresses the greenhouse gas emissions of this industry and focuses on designing the future electricity supply of the main copper mines around the world, from 2020 to 2050, using distributed solar photovoltaic energy, storage, and a grid connection. We also consider the increasing energy demand due to ore grade decline. For the design, we use an optimization model called LEELO. Its main inputs are an hourly annual demand profile, power-contract prices for each mine, cost projections for energy technologies, and an hourly annual solar irradiation profile for each mine. Our findings show that it is attractive for the mines to have today a solar generation of 25% to 50% of the yearly electricity demand. By 2030, the least-cost solution for mines in sunny regions will be almost fully renewable, while in other regions it will take until 2040. The expected electricity costs range from 60 to100 €/MWh for 2020 and from 30 to 55 €/MWh for 2050, with the lower bound in sunny regions such as Chile and Peru. In most locations assessed, the low cost of solar energy will compensate for the increased demand due to declining ore grades. For the next steps, we recommend representing the demand with further detail, including other vectors such as heat and fuels. In addition, we recommend to include the embodied emissions of the technologies to get a more complete picture of the environmental footprint of the energy supply for copper production.