JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #90 - June/July 2014 - 36

life cycle inventory (LCI), which is primarily
based on a system analysis treating the process chain as a sequence of sub-systems that
exchange inputs and outputs. Hence, the
LCI stage analyses the materials and energy
used (inputs) as well as the products and byproducts generated and the environmental
releases in terms of non-retained emissions
to specified environmental compartments
and the waste to be treated (outputs) for the
product system being studied.
The LCI data can be used on its own to
understand the total emissions, waste and
resource use associated with the material
or the product being studied, to improve
production or product performance; or be
further analysed and interpreted to provide
insights into the potential environmental
impacts of the system (life cycle impact assessment and interpretation steps).

Goal, scope and background
The main objectives of this study were to:
- Deliver a rigorous and impartial environmental assessment of the wind plant in
Pauillac, near Bordeaux, France.
- Describe the most favourable stages and
the most impactful stages (from an environmental point of view) in order to identify
optimization and improvement areas for
technology and product development.
- Perform sensitivity analyses regarding the
influence of different end-of-life treatments
of composite blades and of the wind plant's
lifetime on the environmental profile of the
Pauillac wind plant.
Primary data were collected from Valorem and their suppliers [10-11]. When no
primary data were available, secondary data
based on literature [12-22] and validated
by Valorem were used. These data were
complemented by generic data available in
the Ecoinvent database.
This wind plant is considered a test wind
plant - the final wind turbines will be different from a technical point of view.
The system was simplified assuming that it
was composed of identical turbines. All the
data were collected in 2012. Indeed, as the
wind plant is under development, it was not

possible to base the study on a full year of
operation.
It is important to be able to compare the
potential environmental impacts associated
with the electricity generated by a wind
plant using specific turbines to other forms
of electricity generation.

Functional unit
and system boundaries
The functional unit of this LCA study was
defined as 1 kWh of electricity delivered to
the grid.
Figure 1 shows the life cycle stages considered to assess the environmental impact of
the wind plant during its whole life cycle.
To assess the environmental impacts of the
wind plant, the following indicators from
the CML calculation method were selected:
abiotic resource depletion, acidification
potential, global warming potential, photochemical oxidation and eutrophication.
Indicators proposed by the ReCiPe 2008
method were used to assess the damage to
ecosystems caused by soil occupation and
transformation.
The cumulative energy indicator was also
used to quantify renewable and non-renewable energy consumption.

Impact assessment
This section describes the results of the
evaluation of the wind plant environmental

Tab. I: Main results of the LCA

Impact category

Unit

Change

Cumulative energy
demand

MJ

1.849E-01

Abiotic depletion

kg Sb eq

8.502E-05

Acidification

kg SO2 eq

5.354E-05

Eutrophication

kg PO4 eq

4.014E-05

Global warming
potential

kg CO2 eq

1.177E-02

Photochemical oxidation kg C2H2 eq 3.985E-06
Agricultural land
occupation

m2a

1.935E-04

Urban land occupation

m2a

1.447E-04

Natural land transformation

m2

1.647E-06

effects. The assessment was performed for
the nine environmental impact indicators
mentioned before (see Table 1).
The contribution of the wind plant's main
life cycle stages to each impact category is
shown in the following figure:
For the whole life cycle of the wind plant,
the production stage is the most significant
according to all the environmental impact
indicators studied.
As shown in Fig. 3, the environmental
analysis highlights a dominant incidence of
the moving parts manufactured on eight of
the nine indicators studied.

Fig. 1: Life cycle stages considered to assess the environmental impact of the wind plant

36 jec composites magazine / No90 June - July 2014
JEC COMPOSITES MAGAZINE - Issue #90 - June/July 2014

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