CO2 emissions related to the electricity consumption in the european primary aluminium production a comparison of electricity supply approaches

Koch, Matthias; Harnisch, Jochen

doi:10.1007/bf02978889

Cited by 16 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…For example, CO 2 emission per ton of the world primary aluminum in 1995 was 13.2 tons using the regional specific mix, higher than 10.7 tons using the contract mix (Schwarz et al, 2001). And CO 2 emissions induced by the electricity consumption of each kilogram aluminum produced in Europe in 1997 are estimated to be 5.7 kg, 6.1 kg, 6.8 kg, and 7.8 kg while using the single power plant supply, the contract mixes, the national mixes, and the European grid mix, respectively (Koch and Harnisch, 2002).…”

Section: How Different Are the System Boundaries?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Generally there is no single approach correct or truly representing the electricity system consumed by the aluminum industry, all have their advantages and disadvantages (Koch and Harnisch, 2002) (details in Table S4 in the supplement). In this review, most studies simply use the national grid mix, while some do carefully analyze the electricity sources with consideration of import and export (EAA, 2008).…”

Section: How Different Are the System Boundaries?mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Addressing sustainability in the aluminum industry: a critical review of life cycle assessments

Liu

Müller

2012

Journal of Cleaner Production

178

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Section: How Different Are the System Boundaries?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: How Different Are the System Boundaries?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Addressing sustainability in the aluminum industry: a critical review of life cycle assessments

Liu

Müller

2012

Journal of Cleaner Production

178

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“…The economic flows are reported as such in the inventory and are not converted to elementary flows. Thereby local and region specific information may be used to expand the elementary flows; for example, the electricity (Koch and Harnisch, 2002) and water (Lan- du and Brent, 2006) supply scenarios. For the farming unit process, all the data of the economic inputs reflect South African values, except for the pesticides requirements.…”

Section: Description Of Data Categoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle inventories to assess value chains in the South African biofuels industry

Brent

Sigamoney²,

Blottnitz³

et al. 2010

J. energy South. Afr.

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The South African government ratified a new biofuels industrial strategy at the end of 2007. The feasibility study that forms the basis of the strategy highlights the potential environmental implications of such a strategy. However, at present there is no structured approach to evaluate the environmental profile of the scenarios within the strategy. This paper introduces life cycle inventories whereby the environmental profiles of biofuel value chains may be evaluated meaningfully. The scope of the paper focuses on the seed extraction biodiesel production scenarios of the strategy. The inventory analysis shows that the inputs and outputs of the farming unit process are sensitive to the type of crop and region of produce. Water usage is a highly variable parameter, which emphasises the importance of rainfall and irrigation to the overall burden of the biodiesel system on water resources. Crop yields may differ by a factor of two, which is a significant difference in terms of land and non-renewable energy resources requirements. The oil and meal/cake content of the seed proves to be the most important parameter that influences the initial unit processes of the value chains; almost all the inputs and outputs of the farming unit processes, for all the crops, range in the order of a factor of two due to this parameter. The uncertainties associated with the logistic system in the value chain also have major implications. Further, should there be no market offset for the meal/cake co-products, the waste treatment requirements would be highly uncertain. Very little uncertainties were detected in the biodiesel production unit process, although the energy efficiency, and sustainability, of the overall production system remains questionable. The paper identifies a number of limitations with inventory sets that need to be addressed through further research efforts to improve the environmental evaluations of a biofuel value chain in South Africa for policy-making purposes.

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“…Weber and colleagues also conclude that the use of political boundaries should be avoided. Koch and Harnisch, who studied the subject of primary aluminum production in Europe, offered no recommended boundary because of Europe's complicated electricity supply structure (Koch and Harnisch ). The United States has a similarly complicated structure of ownership and trading.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Nested Average Electricity Allocation Protocols to Characterize Electrical Grids in Life Cycle Assessment

Colett

Kelly

Keoleian

2015

J of Industrial Ecology

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This study explored the impacts of electricity allocation protocols on the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of electricity consumption. The selection of appropriate electricity allocation protocols, methodologies that assign pools of electricity generators to electricity consumers, has not been well standardized. This can lead to very different environmental profiles of similar, electricity-intensive processes. In an effort to better represent the interconnected nature of the U.S. electrical grid, we propose two new protocols that utilize inter-regional trade information and localized emission factors to combine generating pools that are sub-or supersets of one another. This new nested approach increases the likelihood of capturing important inter-regional electricity trading and the appropriate assignment of generator emissions to consumers of local and regional electricity. We applied the new and existing protocols to the U.S. primary aluminum industry, an industry whose environmental impact is heavily tied to its electricity consumption. Our analysis found GHG emission factors that were dramatically different than those reported in previous literature. We calculated production-weighted average emission factors of 19.0 and 19.9 kilograms carbon dioxide equivalent per kilogram of primary aluminum ingot produced when using our two nested electricity allocation protocols. Previous studies reported values of 10.5 and 11.0, at least 42% lower than those found by our study.often use average emission factors (EFs) at various levels of aggregation (WRI/WBCSD 2007;US EPA 2008). However, depending on which average EF is used, two identical processes can be assessed as having dramatically different emissions from consuming the same quantity of electricity. Average EFs also smooth over differences in emissions between regions.We propose a new methodology that creates a local EF for electricity based on the weighted average of local and regional

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CO2 emissions related to the electricity consumption in the european primary aluminium production a comparison of electricity supply approaches

Cited by 16 publications

References 2 publications

Addressing sustainability in the aluminum industry: a critical review of life cycle assessments

Addressing sustainability in the aluminum industry: a critical review of life cycle assessments

Life cycle inventories to assess value chains in the South African biofuels industry

Using Nested Average Electricity Allocation Protocols to Characterize Electrical Grids in Life Cycle Assessment

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