From LCAs to simplified models: a generic methodology applied to wind power electricity.

This study presents a generic methodology to produce simplified models able to provide a comprehensive life cycle impact assessment of energy pathways. The methodology relies on the application of global sensitivity analysis to identify key parameters explaining the impact variability of systems over their life cycle. Simplified models are built upon the identification of such key parameters. The methodology is applied to one energy pathway: onshore wind turbines of medium size considering a large sample of possible configurations representative of European conditions. Among several technological, geographical, and methodological parameters, we identified the turbine load factor and the wind turbine lifetime as the most influent parameters. Greenhouse Gas (GHG) performances have been plotted as a function of these key parameters identified. Using these curves, GHG performances of a specific wind turbine can be estimated, thus avoiding the undertaking of an extensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This methodology should be useful for decisions makers, providing them a robust but simple support tool for assessing the environmental performance of energy systems.

ELMAS: a one-year dataset of hourly electrical load profiles from 424 French industrial and tertiary sectors.

The combination of ongoing urban expansion and electrification of uses challenges the power grid. In such a context, information regarding customers' consumption is vital to assess the expected load at strategic nodes over time, and to guide power system planning strategies. Comprehensive household consumption databases are widely available today thanks to the roll-out of smart meters, while the consumption of tertiary premises is seldom shared mainly due to privacy concerns. To fill this gap, the French main distribution system operator, Enedis, commissioned Mines Paris to derive load profiles of industrial and tertiary sectors for its prospective tools. The ELMAS dataset is an open dataset of 18 electricity load profiles derived from hourly consumption time series collected continuously over one year from a total of 55,730 customers. These customers are divided into 424 fields of activity, and three levels of capacity subscription. A clustering approach is employed to gather activities sharing similar temporal patterns, before averaging the associated time series to ensure anonymity.

LCA of emerging technologies: addressing high uncertainty on inputs' variability when performing global sensitivity analysis.

In the life cycle assessment (LCA) context, global sensitivity analysis (GSA) has been identified by several authors as a relevant practice to enhance the understanding of the model's structure and ensure reliability and credibility of the LCA results. GSA allows establishing a ranking among the input parameters, according to their influence on the variability of the output. Such feature is of high interest in particular when aiming at defining parameterized LCA models. When performing a GSA, the description of the variability of each input parameter may affect the results. This aspect is critical when studying new products or emerging technologies, where data regarding the model inputs are very uncertain and may cause misleading GSA outcomes, such as inappropriate input rankings. A systematic assessment of this sensitivity issue is now proposed. We develop a methodology to analyze the sensitivity of the GSA results (i.e. the stability of the ranking of the inputs) with respect to the description of such inputs of the model (i.e. the definition of their inherent variability). With this research, we aim at enriching the debate on the application of GSA to LCAs affected by high uncertainties. We illustrate its application with a case study, aiming at the elaboration of a simple model expressing the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of enhanced geothermal systems (EGS) as a function of few key parameters. Our methodology allows identifying the key inputs of the LCA model, taking into account the uncertainty related to their description.