Time-aware life cycle inventories for electricity consumption

Authors

Bednářová S., Gibon T., Benetto E.

Reference

Softwarex, vol. 32, art. no. 102362, 2025

Description

Software package shrecc is designed to handle electricity mix data across European countries, using data from the Energy-Charts API. With an increasing share of renewable energy in electricity mixes, environmental impact varies by hour, day and season – which is not systematically accounted for in LCA. To remediate this, shrecc prepares live-tracked electricity data for use with the brightway package, enabling more accurate life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). Through a case study of electric vehicle charging, we demonstrate the importance of temporally granular data. Our findings reveal that relying on annual average electricity mixes can lead to both over- and underestimation of LCIA results, highlighting the need for more time-aware approaches in energy related life cycle assessments.

Link

doi:10.1016/j.softx.2025.102362