Life Cycle Assessment of Renewable Energy Sources

Governments are setting challenging targets to increase the production of energy and transport fuel from sustainable sources. The emphasis is increasingly on renewable sources including wind, solar, geothermal, biomass based biofuel, photovoltaics or energy recovery from waste. What are the environmental consequences of adopting these other sources? How do these various sources compare to each other?

Life Cycle Assessment of Renewable Energy Sources tries to answer these questions based on the universally adopted method of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This book introduces the concept and importance of LCA in the framework of renewable energy sources and discusses the key issues in conducting their LCA. This is followed by an in-depth discussion of LCA for some of the most common bioenergy sources such as agricultural production systems for biogas and bioethanol, biogas from grass, biodiesel from palm oil, biodiesel from used cooking oil and animal fat, Jatropha biodiesel, lignocellulosic bioethanol, ethanol from cassava and sugarcane molasses, residential photovoltaic systems, wind energy, microalgal biodiesel, biohydrogen and biomethane. Through real examples, the versatility of LCA is well emphasized.

Written by experts all over the globe, the book is a cornucopia of information on LCA of bioenergy systems and provides a platform for stimulation of new ideas and thoughts. The book is targeted at practitioners of LCA and will become a useful tool for researchers working on different aspects of bioenergy.

Dr. Anoop Singh is scientist in Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India, New Delhi, India. Before joining DSIR, he worked at Technical University of Denmark, University College Cork, Ireland, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), New Delhi, India, Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, India, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India and VBS Purvanchal University, Jaunpur, India. Dr. Singh obtained his Ph.D. in Botany from Allahabad Agricultural Institute-Deemed University, Allahabad, India in 2004 and a M.Sc. in Environmental Sciences from GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, India in 2001. He has published more than fifty research articles in scientific journals (>1000 citations, h-index 16) and is a member of several scientific communities. His research interests are focused on sustainable agriculture, the utilization of industrial, agricultural and household waste for eco-friendly energy production, renewable energy and their life cycle assessment.

Dr. Stig Irving Olsen is associate professor in sustainable production at the section for Quantitative Sustainability Assessment, Department of Management Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark. He obtained his Ph.D. in LCA from Technical University of Denmark in 1997 and a Master of Science in Biology from University of Copenhagen in 1988. Since his PhD his main research area has been in methodology development in LCA, particularly in the life cycle impact assessment of human health impact. During the last years his research has focused more on application of LCA in several technology areas, including renewable energy and nanotechnology.

Dr. Deepak Pant is a research scientist at the Flemish Institute for Technological Research (VITO), Belgium, currently working on bioenergy, specifically, the design and optimization of bioelectrochemical systems for energy recovery from wastewaters and microbial electrosynthesis for production of value added chemicals and fuels through electrochemically driven bioprocesses. He has a PhD in environmental biotechnology (2007) from TERI University, New Delhi (India) and has 25 peer-reviewed publications with >800 citations (h-Index 13) and 8 book chapters to his credit. He is involved in several European projects on biomass, biowaste, wastewater treatment and feasibility studies. His research experience lies in industrial biotechnology, biofuels and bioenergy, wastewater treatment, wasteland reclamation and restoration, biofertilizers, sustainable agriculture, and life cycle analysis (LCA).