Sustainability assessment of power generation from fossil and renewable energy sources by applying the Total Cumulative Exergy Loss method

Electricity and power generation play an important role in our society. In view of the threat of climate change, it is important to make power generation more sustainable, e.g. by using renewable energy sources like wind, sun and biomass instead of fossil energy sources such as coal, oil and gas. Although exergy and sustainability are related according to literature, it is not common to consider exergy losses when choosing between different systems and energy sources for power generation. The Total Cumulative Exergy Loss (TCExL) method has been developed as a means to take into account as many aspects of sustainability as possible in an objective way. The exergetic sustainability of the following five systems for power generation has been assessed: a coal-fired power plant, a coal-fired power plant including CCS, a biomass-fired power plant, an offshore wind farm and a photovoltaic park. The results of the exergetic sustainability assessment have been compared with results obtained from applying an environmental life cycle assessment method that calculates ReCiPe endpoint indicators. The offshore wind farm has the highest exergetic and environmental sustainability. The photovoltaic park performs second-best. The exergetic sustainability of the coal-fired and biomass-fired power plants is about the same, while the biomass-fired power plant performs better than the coal-fired power plants from an environmental sustainability point of view. It is recommended that the exergetic sustainability is taken into account when assessing the sustainability of power generation and other technological systems.