Life cycle assessment of electricity delivered from an onshore power plant Date: 2006-12-29 based on Vestas V82-1.65 MW turbines Page 1 of 77 Life cycle assessment of electricity produced from onshore sited wind power plants based on Vestas V82-1.65 MW turbines VESTAS PROPRIETARY NOTICE: This document contains valuable confidential information of Vestas Wind Systems A/S. It is protected by copyright law as an unpublished work. Vestas reserves all patent, copyright, trade secret, and other proprietary rights to it. The information in this document may not be used, reproduced, or disclosed except if and to the extent rights are expressly granted by Vestas in writing and subject to applicable conditions. Vestas disclaims all warranties except as expressly granted by written agreement and is not responsible for unauthorized uses, for which it may pursue legal remedies against responsible parties. Life cycle assessment of electricity delivered from an onshore power plant Date: 2006-12-29 based on Vestas V82-1.65 MW turbines Page 2 of 77 Contents Summary..............................................................................................................................................4 Review summary .................................................................................................................................5 Introduction..........................................................................................................................................6 Goal of the study..................................................................................................................................7 Scope of the study................................................................................................................................8 Functional unit.................................................................................................................................8 General system boundaries..............................................................................................................8 Allocation ......................................................................................................................................11 Quantification of material and energy exchanges .........................................................................11 Data requirements..............................................................................................................................12 Life Cycle inventory analysis ............................................................................................................13 Data collection...............................................................................................................................13 Procedures for data collection .......................................................................................................13 Building the model in GaBi...........................................................................................................14 Inventory of onshore wind power plant.........................................................................................16 Operation ...................................................................................................................................19 Transport....................................................................................................................................20 End of life scenario....................................................................................................................21 Manufacturing of wind power plant components......................................................................23 Resource consumption for the V82-1.65MW wind power plant...............................................31 Resource consumption for electricity delivered from a V82-1.65MW wind power plant ........32 Energy consumption per kWh produced ...................................................................................33 Energy balance...........................................................................................................................34 Emissions to air and water per kWh produced ..........................................................................35 Life cycle impact assessment.............................................................................................................36 Life Cycle Impact Assessment methodology and types of impact................................................36 Environmental impacts ..............................................................................................................36 Calculation method....................................................................................................................38 Environmental impacts of 1 kWh..............................................................................................39 Environmental impacts divided into life cycle stages ...............................................................41 Comparison with European electricity ......................................................................................42 Life cycle interpretation.....................................................................................................................43 Data quality assessment.................................................................................................................45 Sensitivity analysis ........................................................................................................................46 The electricity production of the chosen site for the wind power plant ....................................47 The size of the wind power plant...............................................................................................48 The length of cables to the wind power plant............................................................................49 The life time of the wind power plant .......................................................................................50 The disposal scenario for composites........................................................................................51 Transport scenario for raw materials .........................................................................................53 Four doubling of replacement of main components..................................................................54 Data for processing steel............................................................................................................55 Data for processing steel............................................................................................................55 Change of the disposal scenario for steel ..................................................................................56 Vestas Wind Systems A/S · Alsvej 21 · 8900 Randers · Denmark · www.vestas.com Life cycle assessment of electricity delivered from an onshore power plant Date: 2006-12-29 based on Vestas V82-1.65 MW turbines Page 3 of 77 Limitations.........................................................................................................................................58 Conclusions........................................................................................................................................59 Appendix 1.........................................................................................................................................60 Appendix 2.........................................................................................................................................66 Appendix 3.........................................................................................................................................68 Vestas Wind Systems A/S · Alsvej 21 · 8900 Randers · Denmark · www.vestas.com Life cycle assessment of electricity delivered from an onshore power plant Date: 2006-12-29 based on Vestas V82-1.65 MW turbines Page 4 of 77 Summary This report makes up the final reporting on the life cycle assessment (LCA) of onshore sited wind power plants based on the Vestas V82-1.65 MW turbine. The LCA and the reporting have been prepared by Vestas Wind Systems A/S. The purpose of the project is to carry out a life cycle assessment of an onshore wind power plant, as a basis for assessment of environmental improvement possibilities for wind power plants through their life cycles. Furthermore, Vestas Wind Systems A/S wishes to document the environmental performance of its wind turbines to supply customers, NGOs (non-governmental organisations), governments and other stakeholders with objective information on wind energy delivered by Vestas turbines. Previously, similar LCA reports have been prepared for the V80-2.0 MW turbine in cooperation with Elsam Engineering A/S and most recently for the V90-3.0 MW turbine. The V90-3.0 MW report and this report have been prepared solely by Vestas Wind Systems A/S. However, data from the previous reports has been used where appropriate in the LCA of the V82-1.65 MW turbine. It has been a goal for this LCA project to improve the LCA model used in relation to the previous LCA models. The LCA has been submitted to an external expert review by Force Technology to ensure the quality of the LCA. The review by Force Technology can be seen in appendix 3. The results of the LCA shows that the energy pay back time and of the environmental performance of the V82-1.65 MW wind turbines compared