Sustainable energy transition: Beyond material analysis

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Increasing concerns about energy security, grid reliability, and global warming, combined with a rapid decrease in renewable energy costs, have resulted in an energy transition in the United States (US) where photovoltaics (PV) and wind turbines are being deployed, replacing coal generation and providing for increasing electricity demand. Energy solutions developed today should remain desirable in the future, and not create new environmental issues. As future energy deployment goals are established, it is important to investigate potential unintended consequences of large-scale extraction of materials required for alternative energy technologies deployment. The overall goal of this project is to evaluate the potential long-term effects of electricity production in the US as a result of energy transition. The project will evaluate the sustainability of energy transition in the United States by simultaneously considering the environmental and political impact (in foreign countries supplying materials, taking into account the classical "Resource Curse" effect) associated with increase in global demand for nuclear energy as well as large-scale deployment of energy alternatives, in particular wind and photovoltaics. This project is targeted to provide results including 1) material requirement and availability for photovoltaics, wind and nuclear deployment until 2040, 2) consequential life cycle assessment of electricity generation technologies considering country-specific material extraction and impact, 3) an assessment and comparison of the geopolitical costs associated with the production of different forms of energy for renewable and conventional types of energy and 4) sustainability assessment of energy deployment in the US until 2040. It will combine industrial ecology principles such as life cycle assessment, material analysis as well as sustainability metrics including political stability (in foreign counties) to investigate material required for sustainable energy deployment. Life cycle inventory data collected from this work will be submitted for inclusion in the Ecoinvent database and other freely available ones to encourage researchers to use LCA for energy research.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.