Abstract
Purpose
Electricity production is one of the largest sources of environmental emissions—especially greenhouse gases (GHGs)—in the USA. Emission factors (EFs) vary from region to region, which requires the use of spatially relevant EF data for electricity production while performing life cycle assessments (LCAs). Uncertainty information, which is sought by LCA practitioners, is rarely supplied with available life cycle inventories (LCIs).
Methods
To address these challenges, we present a method for collecting data from different sources for electricity generation and environmental emissions; discuss the challenges involved in agglomerating such data; provide relevant suggestions and solutions to merge the information; and calculate EFs for electricity generation processes from various fuel sources for different spatial regions and spatial resolutions. The EFs from the US 2016 Electricity Life Cycle Inventory (eLCI) are analyzed and explored in this study. We also explore the method of uncertainty information derivation for the EFs.
Results and discussion
We explore the EFs from different technologies across Emissions & Generation Resource Integrated Database (eGRID) regions in the USA. We find that for certain eGRID regions, the same electricity production technology may have worse emissions. This may be a result of the age of the plants in the region, the quality of fuel used, or other underlying factors. Region-wise life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) ISO 14040 impacts for total generation mix activities provide an overview of the total sustainability profile of electricity production in a particular region, rather than only global warming potential (GWP). We also find that, for different LCIA impacts, several eGRID regions are consistently worse than the US average LCIA impact for every unit of electricity generated.
Conclusion
This work describes the development of an electricity production LCI at different spatial resolutions by combining and harmonizing information from several databases. The inventory consists of emissions, fuel inputs, and electricity and steam outputs from different electricity production technologies located across various regions of the USA. This LCI for electricity production in the USA will prove to be an enormous resource for all LCA researchers—considering the detailed sources of the information and the breadth of emissions covered by it.
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Data availability
The datasets generated and/or analyzed during this study are available in the electricity baseline life cycle inventory repository. Source code is available on a GitHub repository.
https://www.lcacommons.gov/lca-collaboration/Federal_LCA_Commons/US_electricity_baseline/datasets
Change history
31 March 2023
A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-023-02138-0
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Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank Emily Newes and Dan Bilello for their feedback on this manuscript. This research was conducted as part of the EPA Air, Climate, and Energy National Research Program. Support was provided by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory through Interagency Agreement DW-89-92448301-1, and by Eastern Research Group (ERG) through EPA contract EP-C-16-015, Task Order 008. We acknowledge the valuable contributions of Timothy Skone, Gregory Cooney, George Zaimes, and Ambica Pegallapati at the National Energy Technology Laboratory and KeyLogic.
Funding
Funding was provided by the US EPA Office of Research and Development’s Chemical Safety and Sustainability National Research Program and the former National Risk Management Research Laboratory. The US Environmental Protection Agency, through its Office of Research and Development, funded and conducted the research described herein under an approved Quality Assurance Project Plan.
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Conceptualization, W. W. I.; software, W. W. I., T. G. M. J., T. H.; data curation, W. W. I, T. G., M. J., T. H, K. R.; investigation, W.W.I, T.G. M.J., T.H.; methodology, W.W.I, T.G. M.J., T.H.; validation, W.W.I, T.G., M. J., T. H., A. C., T. R. H., S. C., A. C.; visualization, W. W. I, T. G.; writing, W. W. I, T. G., M. J.,T. R. H., S. C.
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The work has been subjected to review by the EPA Office of Research and Development and approved for publication. Approval does not signify that the contents reflect the views of the Agency, nor does mention of trade names or commercial products constitute endorsement or recommendation for use.
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Communicated by Martin Baitz
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The original online version of this article was revised: affiliation number 5 was incorrectly assigned to the author Sarah Cashman. The correct affiliation is "Eastern Research Group, Inc, Concord, MA, USA". Furthermore, the wrong supplementary file was originally published.
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Ghosh, T., Ingwersen, W.W., Jamieson, M. et al. Derivation and assessment of regional electricity generation emission factors in the USA. Int J Life Cycle Assess 28, 156–171 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-022-02113-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-022-02113-1