Life cycle assessment of renewable energy technologies

Renewable energy technologies (RETs) are based on energy sources that can be renewed in the human lifetime scale. However, similar to their fossil-based counterparts, RETs can also be harmful to the environment, due to the need of using natural resources (e.g., metals, minerals) that are limited in nature and whose extraction and processing to the use state carry a high environmental burden. Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology focuses on the evaluation and analysis of the impacts of the full chain of processes included in a specific system, considering the whole life cycle and taking into consideration local constraints and specific conditions. This chapter reviews the research related to the LCA studies applied to RETs, their bottlenecks and main conclusions, and, finally, the identification of the paths that need further developments or research so that LCA studies can be useful to assist decision-makers to define the most suitable renewable energy policies.