Time-resolved life cycle assessment for sustainable industry

The role of data centers has intensified with the expansion of the digital economy and the advancement of information and communication technologies. Their environmental footprint is determined by the electricity mix, whose temporal and spatial variability is insufficiently addressed in the conventional life cycle assessment (LCA). In this study, a time-resolved environmental impact assessment was applied to electricity generation in Slovenia and Serbia in 2023. The focus was on three categories: climate change, resource use (minerals and metals), and water use. Hourly generation data from the ENTSO-E Transparency platform were linked with the Ecoinvent 3.11 datasets to generate hourly impact profiles and representative daily profiles for summer and winter. The study's results reveal clear differences primarily due to the distinct electricity mix structures of the two countries. Slovenia relies on nuclear, hydro, and photovoltaic power, while Serbia is predominantly coal-based. Photovoltaic generation in Slovenia reduces greenhouse gas emissions during daylight but increases the impacts related to the use of minerals and metals. Serbia exhibits higher climate change burdens yet lower variability in other categories. Seasonal and diurnal fluctuations influence emission intensities, underscoring the limits of static, annualized assessments. The findings provide input for policy and smart infrastructure planning. Strategies for electric vehicle charging, data centers, and demand-side measures should integrate temporal profiles of environmental impacts. Tools such as environmentally differentiated tariffs or time-varying carbon pricing can help align energy use with periods of lower impact. More broadly, the results highlight trade-offs between greenhouse gas mitigation and other pressures, underscoring the need for holistic energy transition pathways.