2nd International Conference on Renewable Energy Research and Applications - ICRERA 2013, Madrid (Spain). 20-23 October 2013
Summary:
The final goal of this paper is to assess the sustainability of electricity production from wheat straw grown in Spain and burned in 25 MWe power plant. For that purpose a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the system was performed. To implement the LCA, inventory data for the agricultural, the transport and the transformation phases were collected considering their most common values and ranges of variability for the Spanish case. The Global Warming Potential (GWP) and the energy balance of the system were obtained as results of the assessment. These results were compared with those of the electricity produced from natural gas in Spanish power plants, as reference from the cleanest fossil system of electricity production available. The production of electricity from wheat straw in Spain accomplished European Union sustainability criteria of 60% Global Heating Gases (GHG) savings for more than 70% of the simulations.
Keywords: life cycle assessment (LCA); bioenergy; crop residues; global warming potential (GWP); primary energy balance; uncertainty analysis; montecarlo simulation
DOI: 
https://doi.org/10.1109/ICRERA.2013.6749848
Published in ICRERA 2013, pp: 722-727, ISBN: 978-1-4799-1464-7
Publication date: 2014-03-31.
Citation:
C. M. Sastre, Y. González-Arechavala, A. Santos-Montes, Evaluation of the environmental sustainability of the use of straw for electricity production, 2nd International Conference on Renewable Energy Research and Applications - ICRERA 2013, Madrid (Spain). 20-23 October 2013. In: ICRERA 2013: Conference proceedings, e-ISBN: 978-1-4799-1464-7
