Assessing the life cycle environmental benefits of renewable distributed generation in a context of carbon taxes: The case of the Northeastern American market

Results show that the increase of carbon taxes significantly decrease the environmental benefits as a consequence of DG. When considering GHG emissions, the 30 kW micro-wind turbine efficiency gets from −6.3 to −3.8 kg CO2 eq/kW h, when carbon tax increases from 0 to 60 US$/tonne CO2eq (60% reduction). Same trend is observed for other environmental impacts, such as resource, human health and ecosystem quality. These results help in giving more insight on how two overlapping clean air policies interfere and how efficient they are in reducing GHG emissions at the same time.