Environmental impacts of electrifying the bus fleet: a consequential life cycle assessment

This study performed a consequential life cycle assessment (CLCA) to estimate the environmental impacts of substituting the diesel bus fleet in São Paulo city with battery electric buses (BEB), in a 2035 horizon. We focused on greenhouse gas emissions, human health and ecosystems impacts. The methodology includes a general equilibrium modelling (GEM) stage, which depicts the Brazilian economy as divided in 85 economic sectors and included the effects of direct land use change. Additionally, it includes the adaptation of Ecoinvent datasets, which represent reference products of the most impacted economic sectors. The additional electricity demand required for the new bus fleet was modelled for three cases: natural gas, hydraulic and generation from other sources. Results suggest that the total substitution of the bus fleet is ineffective as a means of reducing GWP if the additional electricity comes from natural gas, even if 100% of the generation were to take place on combined cycle power plants.