Comparative life cycle assessment study on environmental impact of oil production from micro-algae and terrestrial oilseed crops

•A comparative LCA of microalgae oil and terrestrial oilseeds crops was carried out.•Microalgae oil has the greatest impact due to the electricity consumption.•Three scenarios for micro-algae oil with renewable source was investigated.•Photovoltaics compared to biogas shows the best environmental performances.•Co-products valorization might reduce the impact of algae oil.

In this study the LCA methodology is applied in order to satisfy two goals: i) to evaluate the hot spots in site-specific production chain of biodiesel from terrestrial and micro-algae feedstock; ii) to compare quantitatively, utilizing primary data, the impacts of the first generation in respect to the third generation bio-fuels. Results show that micro-algae are neither competitive yet with traditional oil crops nor with fossil fuel. The use of renewable technologies as photovoltaics and biogas self production might increase the competitiveness of micro-algae oil. Further investigations are however necessary to optimize their production chain and to increase the added value of co-products.