Environmental impact for offshore wind farms: Geolocalized Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach

International audienceThis paper presents an approach for Environmental Impact Assessment through the use of geolocalized LCA approach, for fixed and floating offshore wind farms. This work was undertaken within the EU-sponsored EnerGEO project, aiming at providing a versatile modeling platform for stakeholders allowing calculation, forecasting and monitoring of environmental impacts of different sources of energy. This paper described the geolocalized LCA approach, and its use for the evaluation of environmental impacts of wind energy. The effects of offshore wind farms on global environnemental impacts are evaluated though the LCA approach. It takes into account the type of wind farm, the construction phase, all technical aspects, the operation and maintenance scheme and the decommissioning. It also includes geolocalized information such as wind resources, bathymetry, accessibility ... Environmental impact parameters are accessible through a web service helping the decision makers in assessing the environnemental impacts

Web tool for energy policy decision-making through geo-localized LCA models: A focus on offshore wind farms in Northern Europe

International audienceEnvironmental performances of electricity generation, expressed as environmental impacts per kWh of electricity produced, depend strongly on technical, methodological and geographical parameters. When considering the global environmental performances of renewable energies, a geo-dependent life cycle assessment (LCA) taking into account geographical issues is of high interest. To illustrate this issue, a web map service enabling "geolocalized life cycle assessment" of offshore wind farms for different configurations has been developed. Based on a modular LCA model and on collaborative works made within the framework of the FP7 co-funded project EnerGEO, the developed tool should help decision makers in assessing the global environmental impacts caused by an offshore wind farm in Northern Europe

Environmental impact assessment of electricity production by photovoltaic system using GEOSS recommendations on interoperability

International audienceWithin the Architecture Implementation Pilot (AIP-3) of GEOSS, we have developed a scenario called "environmental impact assessment of the production, transportation and use of energy for the photovoltaic (PV) sector through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)". It aims at providing decision-makers and policy-planners with reliable and geo-localized knowledge of several impacts induced by various technologies of the PV sector. The scenario is implemented in the GEOSS Common Infrastructure (GCI) and benefits from the GEOSS interoperability arrangements. The FP7-co-funded EnerGEO project provides a GEOSS compliant Catalogue Service for the Web (CSW) that permits to discover the Web Processing Service (WPS) allowing computation of the environmental impact. A WebGIS client provided by the FP7-co-funded GENESIS platform allows users to interact with geospatial data and computation processes. This scenario has proven to be an efficient tool to disseminate knowledge on environmental impacts related to PV because of the GEOSS capabilities in interoperability

The project ENDORSE: exploiting EO data to develop pre-market services in renewable energy

International audienceThe ENDORSE project is co-funded by the FP7 programme of the European Commission, from 2011 to 2013. It exploits the atmosphere service MACC of the European GMES programme (Global Monitoring for Environment and Security) together with other Earth Observation (EO) data and modelling. It aims at providing public authorities and private investors with accurate evaluation and forecasts of renewable resources. The focus is on the devel-opment of downstream services that create added-value information. We present here the achievements of the first period. A very accurate though fast algorithm describing the position of the sun in the sky has been developed. A series of recommendations for quality control of meteorological data have been issued. All algorithms are available as code sources and are being implemented as Web processing services (WPS). Support vector machine techniques prove successful to map the air temperature at 2-m height from satellite images and a few measurements at ground level. The next development of ENDORSE is a portfolio of pre-market downstream services, serving as precursors and examples of best practices for similar services. The resulting services will be described using the INSPIRE metadata and declared in an existing Catalog Service for the Web (CSW) dedicated to energy. Finally, we discuss the mutual benefits between GEOSS (Global Earth Observation System of Systems) and ENDORSE