Considering Ecological Sustainability in Planning the Future Electricity Supply of Chile-How Much More Does it Cost?

Abstract

For assessing the need for storage systems to balance fluctuations from renewable generation, energy expansion approaches relying on cost-optimization are frequently used. However, the integration of environmental impacts —beyond direct CO2— is largely missing in optimization models. Considering these issues would offer the opportunity to identify highly detailed system configurations that maximize both economic welfare and ecological sustainability. To ensure the holistic assessments of environmental sustainability of systems, lifecycle assessment appears as the prominent tool/methodology. The present work, therefore, aims to close this gap by analyzing trade-offs between total system costs and aspects of environmental sustainability with a focus on the need for power system flexibility. We perform a multi-objective optimization, where we illustrate the trade-offs between the three ReCiPe 2016 end-point indicators (“damage to human health”, “damage to ecosystems”, “damage to resource availability”) and system costs. We apply our framework to the Chilean power system for the year 2050 and plan a fully renewable power supply.