Work

Time-aware life cycle inventories for electricity consumption

Year: 2025

Type: software-paper

Abstract: Software package shrecc is a designed to handle electricity mix data across European countries, using data from Energy-Charts API. With an increasing share of renewable energy in electricity mixes, the impact varies by hour, day and season – which is not systematically accounted for in LCA. To remediate this, shrecc prepares live-tracked electricity data for use with the brightway package, enabling more accurate life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). Through a case study of electric vehicle charging, we demonstrate the importance of temporally granular data. Our findings reveal that relying on annual average electricity mixes can lead to both over- and underestimation of LCIA results, highlighting the need for more time-aware approaches in energy related life cycle assessments.

Source: SoftwareX

DOI: 10.1016/j.softx.2025.102362

Authors: Sabina Bednářová, Thomas Gibon, Enrico Benetto

Institution: Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology

Language: English

Topic: Environmental Impact and Sustainability

Subfield: Environmental Engineering

Field: Environmental Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Affordable and clean energy, Climate action, Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,200