Post by David Bantje

I’m excited to share that my first PhD research article has just been published in Environmental Research Communications! 📄 Read the open-access article here: https://lnkd.in/eVTbcH8H In this paper, we combine prospective LCA and monetary valuation to explore external environmental costs of energy production in future transformation pathways. A few take-aways: 👉 External environmental costs often exceed production costs. 👉 The approach to monetization strongly affects absolute external costs and which environmental impact categories dominate, but rankings of technologies in terms of external costs remain robust. 👉 Fossil electricity and heat technologies bear much higher external costs than renewables and nuclear. 👉 Low land-use biomass feedstocks and clean electricity supply are crucial for lower environmental costs of low-carbon alternatives for liquid and gaseous fuels. 👉 Impacts move upstream through the energy transition, underscoring the need to consider and reduce impacts along global supply chains. Many thanks to the Kopernikus-Projekt Ariadne and to my co-authors Romain Sacchi, Rosalie Arendt, Christian Bauer and Gunnar Luderer!