Disaggregation of the Power Generation Sector for Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment

The electricity industry plays a critical role in the economy and environment, and it is important to examine the economic, environmental and policy implications of current and future power generation scenarios. However, the tools that exist to perform the life-cycle assessments are either too complex or too aggregate to be useful for these types of activities. In this work, we build upon the framework of an existing aggregate model – the Economic Input-output Life-cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) tool – by adding data about the electricity industry and disaggregating this single sector into additional sectors, each representing a specific portion of electricity industry operations. For each newly disaggregated sector we create a process-specific supply chain and a set of emission factors that allow calculation of the environmental effects of the sector’s output. This new model allows a much better fit to different problem scenarios than what is possible with the current model.