Life Cycle Management from Global to Local | 2026
Authors: Bednářová S.; Gibon T.; Benetto E.
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-17987-6_4
Journal: Life Cycle Management from Global to Local
Year: 2026
Publisher: Springer Science+Business Media
Document Type: Book chapter
Open Access: All Open Access; Gold Open Access
Cited by: 0
Electricity mixes in European countries vary significantly by hour, day and season. This is mainly due to an increasing share of renewable energy in the electricity mix, meaning that relying on annual average electricity data may misrepresent life cycle impact assessment results for applications where electricity supply is a main contributor and can be discontinuous. To address this, we developed a tool to use live tracked electricity data and prepare them into ready-to-use brightway database. We demonstrate the importance of time-aware electricity databases through a small case study of electric vehicle charging at different times of the day, different seasons, and different years. Our results highlight the variability of electricity mixes and showcase that using annual average electricity mixes, LCIA results can either be over- or underestimated, underscoring the need for more temporally granular approaches. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2026.
Electric vehicles; Life cycle; Annual average; Average electricity data; Case-studies; Electric vehicle charging; Electricity mixes; Electricity supply; European Countries; Lifecycle impact assessment; Ready to use; Renewable energies; Database systems