Power-to-Olefins: a prospective Life Cycle Assessement

Light olefins (LOs) are the largest volume organic chemicals produced worldwide and represent essential building blocks for the chemical industry. Nevertheless, the reliance of incumbent LOs production routes on fossil resources makes them significant contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental pressures. Power-to-X technologies have emerged as promising alternatives for integrating renewable energy and carbon sources into the chemical industry. As emerging technologies, however, they are characterized by higher costs and lower efficiencies than incumbent production routes, which benefit from decades of technological learning and optimization. This study applies a prospective Life Cycle Assessment (pLCA) framework to evaluate the long-term sustainability potential of Power-to-Olefins (PtO) under evolving background and foreground conditions. The assessment covers the period 2025-2050, integrating Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP1, SSP2, and SSP3) with normative environmental learning rates to determine whether three PtO configurations can meet climate neutrality and absolute environmental sustainability targets. Under current conditions, biomass based pathways exhibit climate change impacts of approximately 3.06-4.82 kg CO2-eq. per kg LOs. By 2050, background decarbonization reduces these impacts to 1.35-1.05 kg CO2-eq. per kg LOs under SSP1. Despite the substantial improvements, these pathways exceed the allocated share of the Safe Operating Space (soSOS) by a factor of 19-79. Normative environmental learning rate analysis indicates that hypothetical learning rates (hLRs) between 4% and 8% are required to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, rates considered feasible. In contrast, achieving absolute environmental sustainability would demand higher learning rates (>20%) across multiple impact categories, indicating the need for strong stakeholders’ commitment and policy support for PtO technologies to operate within planetary boundaries.