# Spatialized and Prospective LCA of Agrivoltaism in the Mediterranean basin under Climate Change

Pierre Jouannais, Lia Rapella, Philippe Drobinski, Nicolas Viovy, Mélanie

Douziech, Mathilde Marchand

► To cite this version:

Pierre Jouannais, Lia Rapella, Philippe Drobinski, Nicolas Viovy, Mélanie Douziech, et al. Spatialized and Prospective LCA of Agrivoltaism in the Mediterranean basin under Climate Change. 12th International Conference on Life Cycle Management, LCM (Life Cycle Management), Sep 2025, Palerma, Italy. **hal-05326757**

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https://hal.science/hal-05326757v1

Submitted on 22 Oct 2025

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# Spatialized and Prospective LCA of Agrivoltaism in the Mediterranean basin under Climate Change

Pierre Jouannais¹,², Lia Rapella³, Philippe Drobinksi³, Nicolas Viovy⁴, Mélanie Douziech⁵, Mathilde Marchand²

¹INRAE, France; ²Centre Observation, Impacts, Energie (OIE), MINES Paris - PSL University, France; ³Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, LMD, France; ⁴Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, LSCE, France; ⁵Agroscope, Life Cycle Assessment Research Group, Switzerland

Mediterranean agriculture will face significant challenges from climate change throughout the 21st century, necessitating adaptation to sustain production. Without such measures, reduced efficiency and yields will further increase agriculture's environmental footprint to maintain output levels. Among the options for adaptation and mitigation, agrivoltaics—the integration on the same land of photovoltaic energy production and crop cultivation—offers a promising solution by mitigating climate impacts on crops while promoting renewable energy production.

However, the environmental performance of agrivoltaic systems depends on complex interactions among technological, agronomic, and meteorological factors, all of which are expected to evolve. Anticipating these systems' future performances is essential to identify contexts and scenarios where agrivoltaics maximize environmental benefits. Such projection also helps prevent suboptimal deployment, where conventional photovoltaic and agricultural systems might outperform agrivoltaics.

Our study thus supports decision-making by conducting a prospective, consequential life cycle assessment (LCA) of agrivoltaics, whether driven by crop or energy demand. We integrate a parameterized LCA model with prospective databases using PREMISE and simulate yields and environmental flows with the ORCHIDEE land surface model, tailored for agrivoltaic and conventional systems. The analysis focuses on the Mediterranean coasts of France, Spain, and Italy, considering local soil carbon and water dynamics. Substantial attention is given to addressing the uncertainty and the sensitivity of the results in relation to the three components of the model, i.e., foreground, background and land surface model.

Our work thus provides an insightful mapping of where, when, to what extent and under which scenarios agrivoltaic impacts outperform the conventional ones by studying a large scope of possibilities for socio-economic pathways (SSP), climate trajectories, technological and methodological choices. This comprehensive approach provides actionable insights for planning agrivoltaic deployment under diverse scenarios for the 21st century.

# Coupling LCA And Dynamic MFA: A Literature Analysis

Alexis Boutin¹,²,³, Anne Ventura¹, Franck Michaud², Cyrille François⁴

¹Gustave Eiffel University, France; ²ESB, France; ³French Environment and Energy Management Agency, France;

⁴ENTPE, France

A combined implementation of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Material Flow Analysis (MFA) is needed to represent a system with its flows, stocks and their related transition dynamics and also assess environmental impacts related to system's flows with a full LC perspective at different scales: production line, company, territory, etc. However, this coupling is subject to several methodological issues that first need to be overcame:

LCA of products (which is the traditional LCA, and will be referred as LCA hereafter) and MFA don't have the same scopes, implying different system boundaries. While MFA has a wide view on a system with all related products implied in the studied territory, LCA focuses on a unique product (i.e. the reference flow) around which the system is built, also taking into account processes that took place outside the studied territory but implied in the LC. As a consequence, links between coproducts have been cut, or substituted, in LCA databases, preventing from considering an industrial process entirely.

Based on that assumption, the traditional LCA calculation routine has been built on the basis of matrix