• Emphasizing the importance of the crop type and area under cultivation in the environmental effects of any type of energy supply for irrigation. • In pressurized irrigation, providing energy for a larger area compared to a smaller area leads to less carbon emissions per unit of cultivated area. • The outcome encourages the cultivation of crops with less environmentally detrimental energy supply requirements for their irrigation. • The most environmental impact of energy supply for irrigation projects includes global warming on human health. The agricultural sector in Iran is the largest consumer of water, with pressurized irrigation systems increasingly adopted to improve water productivity. However, their higher energy demand intensifies greenhouse gas emissions, creating a critical environmental and economic trade-off. This study employs a life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate and compare the environmental impacts and costs of three energy sources—grid electricity, diesel generators, and solar photovoltaic (PV) panels—for solid-set sprinkler irrigation of wheat and maize in Qazvin province, Iran. The assessment, conducted using SimaPro software with the ReCiPe 2016 Endpoint method, covers the construction, transportation, installation, and 20-year operation of energy supply systems for two functional units (40 and 60 ha). Results indicate that the national electricity grid—largely reliant on fossil fuels—imposes the most severe impacts on human health, ecosystems, and resources, while solar PV demonstrates the lowest. Although solar systems entail higher upfront costs, strategies such as selling surplus electricity to the grid can recover these costs within approximately five years. The study also reveals that larger irrigation areas yield lower environmental impacts per hectare, highlighting the scale efficiency of renewable energy integration. These findings provide actionable insights for policymakers and agricultural planners aiming to reduce the carbon footprint of irrigation while maintaining economic viability.
Mirahmad et al. (Sun,) studied this question.