Bergerson, Joule A.Nishikawa, Emily2024-07-082024-07-082024-07-04Nishikawa, E. (2024). Evaluating innovative electrochemical systems in the energy sector with life cycle assessment (Doctoral thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca.https://hdl.handle.net/1880/119133https://doi.org/10.11575/PRISM/46729Innovative technologies such as carbon conversion technologies, drop-in fuel production, and automotive batteries are being developed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, assessing the potential emissions of these emerging technologies presents significant challenges. This thesis explores how assessment frameworks can be adapted to effectively evaluate these new solutions by expanding boundaries, functional units, feedstocks, and metrics to support more informed decision-making. Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies typically evaluate systems with defined products, which may not apply to emerging technologies. These studies often limit assessments to known components, such as intermediate products in cradle-to-gate studies. The first part of the thesis expands the boundary to cradle-to-grave by proposing potential markets or uses for the intermediate products. Additional insights are provided, facilitating and encouraging technology developers to apply LCA even at early development stages. In other cases, emerging technologies and novel resources nearing deployment, such as lithium production and refining in North America, have been scarcely studied for their potential environmental impacts. Alternative battery technologies such as sodium-ion batteries are also being explored, which is assessed in the context of competition with lithium-ion batteries. A hybrid functional unit that includes considerations of the use phase of both lithium and sodium batteries is employed to avoid completely excluding the use phase as commonly seem in comparative assessments. The second part of the thesis demonstrates that including design parameters for battery use offers a broader context for evaluating competition among different battery technologies. The final part of this thesis focuses on deployment decisions, using aviation fuel production as a case study. This area presents numerous feedstock and technological pathway options. The scope is expanded to consider both types of feedstocks typically studied separately (biomass and CO2) and adapts an iterative framework to include complementary metrics (production cost and supply risks), leading to a more comprehensive assessment and more effective decision-making. This thesis addresses the challenges of assessing emerging technologies. The findings emphasize that LCA modeling choices strongly influence conclusions. Expanding boundaries, considering alternative pathways, and incorporating related key metrics offer additional insights for comprehensive assessments and informed decisions regarding emerging technologies.enUniversity of Calgary graduate students retain copyright ownership and moral rights for their thesis. You may use this material in any way that is permitted by the Copyright Act or through licensing that has been assigned to the document. For uses that are not allowable under copyright legislation or licensing, you are required to seek permission.life cycle assessmentenergy sectoremerging technologiesEngineering--EnvironmentalEnergydoctoral thesis