Page 16 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

Importance of Life Cycle Assessment
of Renewable Energy Sources

Anoop Singh, Stig Irving Olsen and Deepak Pant

Abstract The increasing demand for sustainable renewable energy sources to
reduce the pollution and dependency on conventional energy resources creates a
path to assess the various energy sources for their sustainability. One renewable
energy source might be very attractive for heat production and not so attractive for
electricity and transport purposes. The commercial-scale production of these
energy sources requires careful consideration of several issues that can be broadly
categorized as raw material production, technology, by-products, etc. The life
cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool that can be used effectively in evaluating various
renewable energy sources for their sustainability and can help policy makers
choose the best energy source for specific purpose. Choice of allocation method is
very important in assessing the sustainability of energy source as different allo-
cation methods respond in present differently. The present chapter is an effort to
highlight the importance of LCA of renewable energy sources.

1 Introduction

Progressive depletion of conventional fossil fuels with increasing energy con-
sumption and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has led to a move toward
renewable and sustainable energy sources (Singh et al. 2011, 2012; Nigam and

A. Singh (&) S. I. Olsen
Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Ministry of Science and
Technology, Technology Bhawan, New Mehrauli Road, New Delhi 110016, India
e-mail: apsinghenv@gmail.com
S. I. Olsen
e-mail: siol@dtu.dk
D. Pant
Separation and Conversion Technology, Flemish Institute for Technological Research
(VITO), Mol, Belgium
e-mail: deepak.pant@vito.bepantonline@gmail.com

A. Singh et al. (eds.), Life Cycle Assessment of Renewable Energy Sources, 1
Green Energy and Technology, DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4471-5364-1_1,
Ó Springer-Verlag London 2013