Environmental Impact of Slovenian and Croatian Electricity Generation Using an Hourly Production-Based Dynamic Life Cycle Assessment Approach

A temporal and dynamic approach to the environmental impact of electricity production is necessary to accurately determine its impact. This study aimed to assess the environmental impacts of domestic electricity generation technologies in Slovenia and Croatia using a production-based dynamic life cycle assessment approach for 2020–2024. Hourly resolved actual generation per production type from the ENTSO-E Transparency platform was used and mapped to the Ecoinvent electricity generation datasets. The results showed lower impacts in the climate change category, which correlated with periods of higher renewable contributions. The relative standard deviation values were 21.6% and 18.6% for Slovenia and Croatia, respectively. A higher average impact on resource use, minerals and metals was observed in the Croatian electricity production mix. In Slovenia, significant fluctuations in solar power generation led to a high coefficient of variation of 90.5% in the resource use, minerals and metals impact category, with higher values observed in summer owing to the seasonality of photovoltaic generation. Conversely, Croatia exhibited substantial hourly variability in wind power generation (6.0–629.3 MW), with a relative standard deviation of 18.9%. The results highlight the potential for optimizing the operation of flexible appliances and electric vehicle charging based on real-time emission intensity, contributing to lower environmental impacts through smarter energy use.