Evaluating Environmental Performance in Low-Carbon Energy Systems

Developing economic well-being and preserving a healthy environment are not opposed forces but do, on the contrary, have a primary relationship and require a similar way of thinking: maximizing the efficiency of a product over its life cycle will minimize its total financial cost as well as the total environmental impact over its life cycle.

The case studies bellow were developped to substantiate this Life-Cycle-Thinking by delivering high level messages supporting decision making on the sustainable energy arena.

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Greenhouse gas emissions in the nuclear life cycle: A balanced appraisal

In order to combat global warming,a detailed knowledge of the greenhouse gas(GHG)emissions associated with different energy conversion technologies is important. For nuclear energy, GHG emissions result from different process stages of the whole fuel cycle. A life-cycle assessment offers the possibility to properly calculate these emissions. In the past, both indirect energy use and GHG emissions were studied by many researchers. Most of the studies result in low indirect emissions comparable to windturbines.

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