Life cycle assessment of renewable energy sources - key issues. Bibliometric analysis of the literature

Abstract

The aim of the analysis is to systematise scientific research related to the issue of environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of renewable energy sources (RES) to identify key thematic areas and future research directions. A systematic literature review was applied based on bibliometric analysis of publications contained in scientific databases. The research request included records containing the term RES or the names of individual technologies in the titles in combination with the term LCA. A bibliometric analysis of over 1,000 publications identified four thematic clusters of research sub-areas and provided examples of publications referring to them. The result was a number of statistics, such as the structure of publication types, the productivity of authors by their nationality and the share of scientific disciplines. The analysis identified the most important publications in the thematic area. A review shows the interdisciplinarity of the research carried out and the relevance of the topic.