Are Renewables as Friendly to Humans as to the Environment?: A Social Life Cycle Assessment of Renewable Electricity

• Main Authors: Shutaro Takeda, Alexander Ryota Keeley, Shigeki Sakurai, Shunsuke Managi, Catherine Benoît Norris
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2019-03-01
• Series: Sustainability
• Subjects: renewable energy; supply chain; social responsibility; social life cycle assessment; labor conditions; Malaysia; solar PV; Biomass; Hydro
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/5/1370

The adoption of renewable energy technologies in developing nations is recognized to have positive environmental impacts; however, what are their effects on the electricity supply chain workers? This article provides a quantitative analysis on this question through a relatively new framework called social life cycle assessment, taking Malaysia as a case example. Impact assessments by the authors show that electricity from renewables has greater adverse impacts on supply chain workers than the conventional electricity mix: Electricity production with biomass requires 127% longer labor hours per unit-electricity under the risk of human rights violations, while the solar photovoltaic requires 95% longer labor hours per unit-electricity. However, our assessment also indicates that renewables have less impacts per dollar-spent. In fact, the impact of solar photovoltaic would be 60% less than the conventional mix when it attains grid parity. The answer of “are renewables as friendly to humans as to the environment?” is “not-yet, but eventually.”