Life cycle assessment and carbon footprint analysis of power supply.

Abstract

Emissions of the anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHG) that drive climate change and its impacts around the world are growing. According to climate scientists, global carbon dioxide emissions must be cut by as much as 85 percent below 2000 levels by 2050 to limit global mean temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels [1]. Accordingly, this research is aimed to calculate and minimize adverse impacts of our power supply equipment on the environment, setting the target to halve our absolute GHG emissions by 2030, later by 2050 achieving the target of a carbon neutral. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies on power supplies are analyzed to detect the sources of variation across their results, considering the impact on global warming potential (GWP100). The research question is, what is the total carbon footprint of our power supply and how to optimize the power supply with respect to total GHG emission for green future. The manufacturing and use phases are undoubtedly the life cycle phases contributing most strongly. From the manufacturing phase, Aluminum from the metal’s parts play a key role, and the estimation of their impact should be thoroughly scrutinized. The results highlight that the use phase and losses of the power supply is crucial as electricity production types and markets accounts for a significant part of the GWP. Recommendations of increasing efficiency up to 98% will decrease losses and decrease aluminum in the cooling parts. Using different electricity production clean sources such as solar and wind energy will decrease manufacturing electricity emissions. The research methodology consists of qualitative and quantitative approaches. Both OpenLCA software with environmental footprint database EF and manual calculation is conducted. The study further provides new insight into the (LCA)-based on different database sources and a description. The LCA approach used in the research is consistent with the ISO standards [ISO 14040:2006, ISO 14044:2006, ISO/TR 14047:2003, ISO/TS 14048:2002] and PAS 2050.