A critical review of life cycle assessment of renewable agricultural systems

Abstract

Integrating renewable energy technologies into agriculture offers a promising approach to significantly reducing carbon emissions. Agriculture is inherently energy-intensive, with substantial reliance on fossil fuels for various operations, including machinery, irrigation, heating, cooling, and processing. However, these systems come with their own environmental impacts and sustainability challenges, making it critical to understand their overall effect on the environment. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is vital for analyzing these impacts. Despite introducing some uncertainties, LCA methodologies provide a structured approach for examining every phase of the life cycle of a product, empowering stakeholders to identify areas for improvement and make informed decisions. This paper reviews the environmental opportunities and limitations of integrating renewable energy systems into agriculture, focusing on LCA analysis. Renewable systems integrated with farming show the potential to reduce emissions and fossil energy demand. However, many studies focus primarily on energy production, often overlooking significant environmental impacts. Critical data, such as the disposal of hazardous materials, wind turbine noise, and land use for energy crops, are frequently omitted, leading to potentially biased results. LCA research often focuses primarily on carbon emissions and global warming, frequently highlighting renewable energy technologies as sustainable solutions. Yet, there is insufficient focus on human health impacts, particularly the toxicity of substances like heavy metals released during various stages, from production to disposal and recycling. Addressing waste management challenges associated with renewable energy systems is essential to ensuring long-term environmental integrity in agriculture. Future research should aim to fill these gaps by conducting more comprehensive assessments, including the impacts on ecosystems and human health throughout the entire lifecycle of renewable energy systems in farming. Innovation is also needed to improve recycling and waste management of renewable energy components, along with advancing energy storage and decentralized systems in agriculture, with LCA serving as a guiding tool for identifying the most sustainable solutions. Finally, integrating life cycle costing and social LCA is vital for assessing the broader sustainability of renewable energy adoption in agriculture.