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Life Cycle Assessment and Related Systems-Thinking Approaches for Sustainability of Energy and Water Infrastructures

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A special issue of Energies (ISSN 1996-1073). This special issue belongs to the section "B: Energy and Environment".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2020) | Viewed by 10447

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Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Lisa Colosi-Peterson

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Guest Editor

Department of Engineering Systems and Environment, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA
Interests: water and wastewater treatment; sustainable energy and fuels; life cycle assessment (LCA); sustainability metrics

Special Issue Information

Dear colleagues,

Energy and water systems are interrelated, insofar as energy is required to produce clean water, and water is required to produce usable energy, i.e., the so-called “water–energy nexus”. Our world needs innovative, implementable technology solutions that will help navigate tradeoffs between energy and water, ultimately harmonizing the sustainability of both while also mitigating climate change.

The path forward for sustainable energy will likely make use of a mix of technologies, including some with known high water footprints (e.g., bioenergy, CO₂ capture and storage) and others with, hopefully, lower water footprints (e.g., solar PV and wind energy). It remains to be seen what impacts these technologies will have once they are implemented at large scale. The diversity, uncertainty, and significant logistical challenges associated with the implementation of pertinent energy technologies makes it worthwhile to utilize life-cycle assessment and related systems-thinking tools, to anticipate and evaluate possible water–energy futures. Doing so will help balance water, energy, and climate priorities in a way that paves the way for the achievement of sustainable development goals and increased quality of life in developing and developed countries.

We warmly welcome submissions advancing the knowledge base in this area, with special interest in the following topics, as they intersect the interrelationships between water and energy:

Environmental life cycle assessments (LCA) of present and future energy systems
- Including LCAs for developing country scenarios
- Including technological assessments for novel energy pathways;
Improvements in life-cycle methodologies or approaches
- Incorporating novel impacts/endpoints for better characterization of environmental burdens
- Incorporating spatially and/or temporally explicit data
- Utilizing probabilistic frameworks for enhancing decision-making under high uncertainty;
Alternative systems frameworks to supplement or complement traditional LCA
- Incorporating social perspectives in life-cycle studies
- Utilizing cost-benefit analyses, techno-economic analyses, and/or energy footprint analyses.

Prof. Dr. Lisa Colosi-Peterson
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Energies is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

water–energy nexus
life-cycle assessment (LCA)
systems thinking
sustainable development

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 5496 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Trade-Offs in Net Life Cycle Energy Balance and Water Consumption in California Almond Orchards

by Elias Marvinney, Jin Wook Ro and Alissa Kendall

Energies 2020, 13(12), 3195; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13123195 - 19 Jun 2020

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 3114

Abstract

Perennial cropping systems, such as almond orchards and vineyards, increasingly dominate California’s agricultural landscape. In California’s leading agricultural region, the Central Valley, woody perennials comprise about half of total farmland. Woody perennial orchards produce high value food crops such as almonds, but also generate significant woody biomass which, where feasible, is used to generate biomass-derived electricity. Because of its semi-arid climate, California agriculture is heavily dependent on irrigation, which in some regions, requires energy-intensive pumping processes for both surface and groundwater. This research study explores the tradeoffs in economic, energy and water efficiency, considering the response of almond orchards to water application rates, using a life cycle basis for calculations and considering water scarcity, to reveal one part of the food-energy-water nexus. Findings indicate economic efficiency, represented by business-as-usual practices by growers, and which prioritizes almond yield, does not correspond to the lowest net-energy consumption (i.e. energy consumption minus bioenergy production). Bioenergy production follows a parabolic relationship with applied water, due to almond yield and growth response to water availability. Thus, the net energy footprint of almond production is minimized at about −45% of business-as-usual applied water, at odds with the economic demands of the almond industry that prioritize high value food production. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Life Cycle Assessment and Related Systems-Thinking Approaches for Sustainability of Energy and Water Infrastructures)

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17 pages, 606 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Mitigation Life Cycle Assessment: Best Practices from LCA of Energy and Water Infrastructure That Incurs Impacts to Mitigate Harm

by Emily Grubert and Jennifer Stokes-Draut

Energies 2020, 13(4), 992; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13040992 - 22 Feb 2020

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 4029

Abstract

Climate change will require societal-scale infrastructural changes. Balancing priorities for water, energy, and climate will demand that approaches to water and energy management deviate from historical practice. Infrastructure designed to mitigate environmental harm, particularly related to climate change, is likely to become increasingly prevalent. Understanding the implications of such infrastructure for environmental quality is thus of interest. Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) is a common sustainability assessment tool that aims to quantify the total, multicriteria environmental impact caused by a functional unit. Notably, however, LCA quantifies impacts in the form of environmental “costs” of delivering the functional unit. In the case of mitigation infrastructures, LCA results can be confusing because they are generally reported as the harmful impacts of performing mitigation rather than as net impacts that incorporate benefits of successful mitigation. This paper argues for defining mitigation LCA as a subtype of LCA to facilitate better understanding of results and consistency across studies. Our recommendations are informed by existing LCA literature on mitigation infrastructure, focused particularly on stormwater and carbon management. We specifically recommend that analysts: (1) use a performance-based functional unit; (2) be attentive to burden shifting; and (3) assess and define uncertainty, especially related to mitigation performance. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Life Cycle Assessment and Related Systems-Thinking Approaches for Sustainability of Energy and Water Infrastructures)

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18 pages, 2960 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Potable Reuse of Coalbed Methane-Produced Waters in Developing Country Contexts—Could the Benefits Outweigh the Costs to Facilitate Coal Transitions?

by Udayan Singh and Lisa M. Colosi

Energies 2020, 13(1), 154; https://doi.org/10.3390/en13010154 - 28 Dec 2019

Cited by 4 | Viewed by 2816

Abstract

Development of coalbed methane (CBM) projects is critical to the achievement of climate change goals because it will help facilitate coal-to-gas transitions in Asia-Pacific countries with low conventional gas reserves. However, growth in CBM in these regions will necessitate strategic, sustainable approaches to produced water management. We posit that it may be possible to deliver synergistic water, energy, and health benefits by reusing CBM-produced waters as potable water supply in water-stressed coal-bearing regions. The goal of this study is to probabilistically evaluate life cycle costs and benefits of using reverse osmosis to treat CBM-produced water in the Damodar Valley coalfields in eastern India. Two treatment configurations are assessed, namely, centralized, and decentralized (i.e., in-home). We find that both configurations offer good cost-effectiveness based on two separately computed metrics to account for the value of health improvement benefits (i.e., disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) averted or monetized health benefits). We also observe that centralized systems are more cost-effective than decentralized, because they reduce capital cost and use-phase energy consumption per unit-volume treated. Average estimated values for the cost–benefit ratio are <0.5 and 1.0 for centralized and decentralized, respectively. Normalizing by anticipated health benefits, cost-effectiveness metrics are <$30/DALY for the centralized system versus <$200/DALY for the decentralized system. These results are highly sensitive to the value of statistical life and baseline water access. A related analysis taking into account both CBM-produced waters and mine waters revealed that deployment of reverse osmosis (RO) could provide drinking to approximately 3.5 million people over 20 years in the Damodar Valley region. These results have interesting implications not only for the study region but also for other CBM-producing countries experiencing chronic severe water stress. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Life Cycle Assessment and Related Systems-Thinking Approaches for Sustainability of Energy and Water Infrastructures)

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