Environmental sustainability of wind power: An emergy analysis of a Chinese wind farm

Q. Yang, G.Q. Chen, S. Liao, Y.H. Zhao, H.W. Peng and H.P. Chen

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2013, vol. 25, issue C, 229-239

Abstract: After a decade of astonishing growth of wind power capacity worldwide, sustainable utilization of wind energy resources has become an issue of utmost importance. For a comprehensive assessment of the environmental sustainability of a wind power, basic emergy flow diagram and emergy indices are presented in this paper to aggregate various renewable/nonrenewable local resources and purchased economic inputs associated with a wind power system, with concrete illustration by a case study of a modern wind farm in Guangxi, China. It is revealed that the solar transformity of wind electricity is the lowest among typical electricity generation technologies. Emergy-based indices are then calculated to provide integrated information of the investigated wind farm from an ecological point of view. Comparison between the results with existing data for other renewable energy systems reflects the substantial advantages of wind power technology over solar thermal power and photovoltaic technologies in terms of sustainability and ecological cost. Nevertheless, biomass-derived fuels, especially biogas by anaerobic digestion, show a better ecological performance and environmental sustainability than wind and solar technologies. In addition, potential for improvements of Chinese wind farm are identified by optimization effort in human labor, land use and waste treatment.

Keywords: Wind farm; Emergy analysis; Sustainability (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032113002645
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:rensus:v:25:y:2013:i:c:p:229-239

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/600126/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... 600126/bibliographic

DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2013.04.013

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews is currently edited by L. Kazmerski

More articles in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().