Comparing Electricity Options: Life-Cycle Assessment, Reliability and Economics of Electricity Choices

Presenter

Jani Das, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor
Bureau of Economic Geology
Jackson School of Geosciences
University of Texas at Austin

Description

The growth in demand and new energy sources are leading to a more diverse and decarbonized electricity mix, but there is a general lack of comprehensive studies that assess the benefits and drawbacks of these sources, from the standpoints of where and when environmental impacts can be expected, and how these new systems will affect grid reliability and costs of electricity. Several years ago, the Comparing Electricity Options (CEO) project was started to assess and understand the full, life-cycle environmental impacts and costs of building, operating and disposing of the infrastructure needed to generate the electricity that we all need. The CEO project, funded by industry affiliates and BEG, was organized around three phases: (1) conducting life-cycle assessment (LCA) of three critical materials used in batteries and six different generation technologies; (2) combining and testing different combinations of generation options using electricity dispatch models, ensuring highest reliability at the lowest environmental demand throughout a 30-year period; and (3) developing a new “consumer cost of electricity” that includes system integration, backup generation, and environmental costs, leading to a more accurate representation of “costs” than the popular levelized cost of electricity, or LCOE. Results of the study show how the global supply chain of materials impacts local communities and regions where the materials are extracted and processed, estimates of the environmental tradeoffs (carbon and other impacts) by building and operating these new systems, when grid reliability may be impacted as electricity generation is backfilled with more intermittent sources, and estimates of costs for operating grid. The results point to areas where innovation is needed and where research can help address and improve performance of this important resource.