Renewable electricity - what is the true cost?

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
Energy consumed in the chain of processes from extraction, processing, fabrication/manufacture and transport to their ultimate end use is embodied in all materials. Depending on the particular fuels employed, the specific process used and the degree of materials recycling/reuse at each stage of the chain, a particular manufactured item will concomitantly embody environmental emissions and wider consequential environmental impacts. The renewable energy generation of electricity is advocated as a means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions associated with the generation from fossil fuels. Renewable sources, as with fossil-fuelled plants, embody significant emissions in their materials of construction. “Full-chain” embodied energy and CO2 emissions calculations for wind, hydro, solar-thermal and photovoltaic conversion are quite different and the likely trend in future reduction of embodied energy of next generation systems reflects the relative maturity of each technology.

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: