Beyond LCOE: Techno-Economic and Life-Cycle Assessment of Electricity Generation from Coal, Nuclear, Gas, Wind and PV

Comparisons of electricity-generation technologies based solely on the plant-level levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) or direct emissions may obscure important system-level and life-cycle trade-offs. This study compares coal, natural gas, large-scale nuclear power, onshore wind and photovoltaic (PV) generation using a combined techno-economic and life-cycle framework comprising the LCOE, system LCOE (SLCOE), value-adjusted LCOE (VALCOE), screening-level levelized full system cost of electricity (LFSCOE), and life-cycle assessment (LCA). With EU ETS costs included, the calculated LCOE values were 141.00 EUR/MWh for coal, 103.84 EUR/MWh for gas, 73.07 EUR/MWh for nuclear, 57.20 EUR/MWh for PV and 46.35 EUR/MWh for wind. System integration increased the SLCOE particularly for PV (124.37 EUR/MWh) and wind (90.96 EUR/MWh), whereas the increases for dispatchable technologies were comparatively small. The screening LFSCOE comparison further highlighted the cost implications of requiring a single technology to provide firm supply, with substantially higher values for PV and wind than for dispatchable generation. The LCA results showed the lowest life-cycle global-warming impact for nuclear and wind, while coal and natural gas remained dominated by fossil-fuel emissions. Incorporating battery storage increased several environmental burdens of variable renewable generation, particularly water consumption, resource use and selected toxicity indicators. The results demonstrate that technology rankings depend strongly on whether plant-level cost, system integration, system value, firm-supply requirements or life-cycle environmental impacts are considered.