COMPARATIVE LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT OF SUSTAINABILITY INDICATORS OF BIOMASS TECHNOLOGIES WITH OTHER ENERGY GENERATION OPTIONS

摘要

The sustainability of electricity generation from biomass dedicated energy crops and biomass wasteresidues has been compared to that from coal, gas, nuclear and other renewable energy generation options. Theassessment was conducted using sustainability indicators across the life cycle of each technology. The sustainabilityindicators selected for this assessment were electricity price, efficiency of energy generation, greenhouse gasemissions, availability and limitations of each technology, land and water use requirements and social impacts.Overall, electricity generation from biomass waste residues ranks more favourably than gas, coal and nucleargeneration. However, biomass dedicated energy crops have poor performance in land and water use requirements aswell as low social acceptance, making it the least sustainable electricity generation technology studied. By selectingsuitable dedicated energy crops and cultivating them in marginal or degraded soils unsuitable for agriculturalproduction, both land and water requirements could be substantially reduced. This would significantly improve theoverall sustainability of biomass dedicated energy crops to above that of coal, gas and nuclear power generation. Thisis, for instance, the case when weed biomass species are used as types of energy crops for energy production.