The Environmental Impact of Power Electronics Education: A Case Study

Manley, J; Pickert, V; Heidrich, O

doi:10.1109/ECCE-Europe62795.2025.11238735.

The Environmental Impact of Power Electronics Education: A Case Study

Lookup NU author(s): Josh Manley, Professor Volker Pickert ORCiD, Professor Oliver Heidrich ORCiD

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).

Abstract

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a well-established methodology to evaluate the environmental impacts of a product, process, or service. It is a developing field of study within power electronics, with limited published work, predominantly focusing on industrial, transport, and energy sectors. This paper quantifies the environmental impacts of a 2kW inverter, a pedagogical tool used in a university-level electrical engineering course for power electronics education. Employing a cradle-to-grave LCA framework, the study utilises data from literature and the ecoinvent 3.10 database. It is supplemented by Monte Carlo simulations and global sensitivity analysis to evaluate the uncertainty of the model. The results reveal that production contributes the majority of the 20.2kgCO2eq climate change potential. This finding, which may be expected, is empirically validated here for the first time. When the results are scaled up to represent the impact across the whole of the UK, the educational tool produces 113.3 tonnes CO2eq. A comparative analysis with LCA studies in non-educational power electronics applications shows a divergence. While operational and standby modes of powerconverters are significant climate change potential contributors in industrial settings, manufacturing dominates in the inverter used as an educational tool. As more universities are being assessed by their environmental performance, more LCAs must be carried out to cover their practical activities, proving this paper’s importance.