Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of Coal, Natural Gas, and Diesel-Based Electricity Generation

The study compares the life cycle assessment (LCA) of three Electricity generation technologies for Zimbabwe’s energy mix namely a Diesel generator, a Coal fired Power Plant and a Natural gas fired Power Plant. Life cycle inventories (LCI) were developed as openLCA process inventories for 1 kWh of net electricity output, using background information from ecoinvent. Indicative life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) results have been derived for the five midpoint categories of climate change, particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification, photochemical ozone formation, and fossil resource scarcity, using foreground inventory flows (fuel and material inputs, and direct emissions to air, water and waste). The impacts for particulate matter and acidification were highest for coal fired generation, the impacts of diesel generation were greatest per kWh in all other impact areas, and the impacts of natural gas generation were lowest in all impact areas, except for acidification. The findings are similar to the environmental profile of combustion-based power generation and are provided with the aim of carrying out a preliminary, decision relevant comparison; in order to take into account the complete ecoinvent database, a full background-system LCIA run in openLCA (e.g. ReCiPe 2016 or NEEDS_18) is recommended before final publication figures are reported.

Establish the goal and scope definition.Define the goal and scope definition.