School of Soil and Water Conservation, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing, 100083, China.
Bartlett School of Construction and Project Management, University College London, London, WC1H 0QB, UK.
J Environ Manage. 2021 Jul 15;290:112659. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.112659. Epub 2021 Apr 21.
Low-carbon power generation has been proposed as the key to address climate change. However, the sustainability and ecological efficiency of the generating plants have not been fully understood. This study applies emergy analysis and systems accounting to a pilot solar power tower plant in China for the first time to elaborate its sustainable and ecological performances. Emergy analysis covers virtually all aspects of sustainability and ecological efficiency by considering different forms of materials inputs, environmental support and human labor on the same unit of "solar joule". The input-output analysis based systems accounting is applied to trace the complete emergy embodied in the supply chain for all product materials of the given plant against the back ground of complex economic network, which improved the accuracy of accounting. This analysis illustrated unexpectedly low sustainability and ecological efficiency of this particular plant compared with the emergy analysis based on the primary materials (steel, iron, cement, etc.). Purchased emergy responses more than 95% of the total and emergy input in the construction phase is more than twice as much as that in the operation phase. Comparisons with other kinds of clean energy technologies indicate previous studies may have overestimated the sustainability and ecological benefits of low-carbon power plants. Thus, it is necessary to establish this kind of unified accounting framework. In addition, sensitivity analysis suggests that strictly controlling monetary costs of purchased inputs, extending service lifetime and improving power generation efficiency can promote higher sustainability and ecological efficiency for solar power tower plants. This study provides a more comprehensive framework for quantitative emergy-based evaluation of the sustainability and ecological efficiency for low-carbon power systems.
低碳发电被认为是应对气候变化的关键。然而，发电站的可持续性和生态效率尚未得到充分理解。本研究首次将能值分析和系统核算应用于中国的一座太阳能塔式电站示范工程，详细阐述了其可持续性和生态绩效。能值分析通过考虑不同形式的物质投入、环境支持和人类劳动，涵盖了可持续性和生态效率的几乎所有方面，都在同一“太阳能焦耳”单位上进行考虑。基于系统核算的投入产出分析被用于追踪给定工厂所有产品材料在复杂经济网络背景下完整的隐含能值，这提高了核算的准确性。与基于主要材料（钢、铁、水泥等）的能值分析相比，该分析表明该特定工厂的可持续性和生态效率出乎意料地低。购买能值的响应超过了总量的 95%，并且建设阶段的能值投入是运营阶段的两倍多。与其他清洁能源技术的比较表明，先前的研究可能高估了低碳发电厂的可持续性和生态效益。因此，有必要建立这种统一的核算框架。此外，敏感性分析表明，严格控制购买投入的货币成本、延长服务寿命和提高发电效率可以提高太阳能塔式电站的可持续性和生态效率。本研究为低碳电力系统的可持续性和生态效率的基于能值的定量评估提供了更全面的框架。
