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Assessment of Sustainability

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Sustainable Solar Electricity

Part of the book series: Green Energy and Technology ((GREEN))

Abstract

The concept of sustainability is broadly used but lousily defined. Sustainability comprises several dimensions and it is still subject of many academic discussions. Nevertheless, less ambitious approaches enable the possibility to quantify the environmental and socio-economic impacts of any product or service. A powerful and well defined tool (regulated by ISO14040 and ISO14044 standards) is Life Cycle Assessment: its methodology and main phases (definition of functional unit and scope, life cycle inventory, impact assessment and interpretation) are explained in this chapter with a focus on the assessment of energy technologies, and including a summary of the most used Life Cycle Impact Assessment methodologies that are currently available. A broader approach towards life cycle “sustainability” assessment requires the inclusion of tools to evaluate socio-economic impacts, such as life cycle costing and total cost of ownership, levelized cost of the produced energy or product environmental footprint that are also presented in this chapter.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In the international standards described in this section, the term product includes goods and services.

  2. 2.

    The previous versions ISO 14040:1997, ISO 14041:1998, ISO 14042:2000 and ISO 14043:2000 were cancelled and replaced by the new standards.

  3. 3.

    Products and materials include raw materials, intermediate products and co-products. Secondary raw materials may include recycled materials.

  4. 4.

    OpenEI database: https://openei.org/.

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  1. Institute for Advanced Materials and Mathematics (INAMAT2) and Department of Sciences, Public University of Navarra (UPNA), Pamplona, Spain

    Antonio Urbina

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  1. Antonio Urbina
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Correspondence to Antonio Urbina .

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Urbina, A. (2022). Assessment of Sustainability. In: Sustainable Solar Electricity. Green Energy and Technology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91771-5_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-91771-5_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-91770-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-91771-5

  • eBook Packages: EnergyEnergy (R0)

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