Evaluation of the environmental sustainability of the use of straw for electricity production

Abstract

The final goal of this paper is to assess the sustainability of electricity production from wheat straw grown in Spain and burned in 25 MWe power plant. For that purpose a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of the system was performed. To implement the LCA, inventory data for the agricultural, the transport and the transformation phases were collected considering their most common values and ranges of variability for the Spanish case. The Global Warming Potential (GWP) and the energy balance of the system were obtained as results of the assessment. These results were compared with those of the electricity produced from natural gas in Spanish power plants, as reference from the cleanest fossil system of electricity production available. The production of electricity from wheat straw in Spain accomplished European Union sustainability criteria of 60 Global Heating Gases (GHG) savings for more than 70 of the simulations.