Sustainable use of biomass energy sources can reduce dependency on fossil fuels. Wood biomass is the primary source for heating in Slovenia, with firewood and wood pellets having the highest share. Slovenia’s largest consumers of wood fuels are households primarily using wood from their forests or imported wood pellets. This research used a life cycle assessment to analyze and evaluate the environmental impacts of using firewood and wood pellets for household heating in Slovenia for the first time. The results showed that wood logs have a considerably greater effect on stratospheric ozone depletion, ozone formation, and fine particulate matter (PM) formation. The impact on global warming was lower due to short transportation distances and using log boilers with high combustion efficiency (0.016 and 0.041 kg CO₂ eq for wood log and wood pellet combustion, respectively). An increase in transportation distance from 100 km to 1000 km resulted in an 84.9% increase in the values for the categories ozone formation and human health, a 120.4% increase for fossil resource scarcity, and a 102.4% increase in global warming, supporting the premise that short distribution routes are necessary for more sustainable use of the energy source.

The complexities of high PV penetration in the electricity grid in Slovenia based on targets proposed in national energy and climate plan were explored. Scenarios modeled an increase in installation power from 1800 MW in 2030 to 8000 MW in 2050. They were analyzed using energy modeling and life cycle assessment to assess the technical and environmental aspects of high PV grid penetration. The results showed that the increase in PV production from 2200 GWh (2030) to 11,090 GWh (2050) showed an unfavorable course of excess electricity in the system, resulting in the need for short-term and long-term storage strategies and exports of electricity. LCA analysis showed that penetration of a high share of PV results in a decrease in the impact category of global warming, which is higher in 2050 green scenarios that phase out coal and lignite electricity sources (80.5% decrease) compared to the 2020 baseline scenario. The increase in mineral resource scarcity can be observed with an increase in PV share when comparing the 2030 (50%) and 2050 (150%) BAU scenarios with the baseline scenario (2020). Factors such as environmental impacts, technical challenges, and the impact on the grid must be considered when implementing a decarbonization strategy.

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.