Life Cycle Assessment A Gentle Introduction

Transcription

1 Life Cycle Assessment A Gentle Introduction Nicholas M. Holden

2 Outline Life cycle thinking What is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)? Why use LCA? A brief history of LCA ISO family of LCA standards A quick run through the methodology How has LCA been used?

3 Life Cycle Thinking The identification of possible improvements to goods and services in the form of lower environmental impacts and reduced use of resources across all life cycle stages from raw material extraction and conversion, through manufacture and distribution, to use and/or consumption and ending with re-use, recycling of materials, energy recovery and ultimately disposal The key aim of Life Cycle Thinking is to avoid burden shifting (JRC Life Cycle Thinking)

4 Life Cycle Thinking Life Cycle Assessment Life Cycle Management Ecodesign Upcycle The life cycle of a mobile phone (UNEP, 2010)

5 A Life Cycle Thinking rule-of-thumb Design the life cycle, not the product per se

6 What is Life Cycle Assessment? A technique for assessing the environmental aspects associated with a product over its life cycle (PreConsult) A technique to assess the environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product, process or service (US EPA) LCA addresses the environmental aspects and potential environmental impacts (e.g. use of resource and the environmental consequence of releases) through a product s life cycle from raw material acquisition through production, use, end-of-life treatment, recycling and final disposal (ISO14040)

7 Cradle-to-grave Every product has a life, starting with the design/development of the product followed by resource extraction production (production of materials, as well as manufacturing/provision of the product) use/consumption and finally end-of-life activities (collection/sorting, reuse, recycling, waste disposal)

8 (Rebitzer et al., 2004)

9 What does LCA offer? LCA evaluates all stages of a product s life from the perspective that they are interdependent, meaning that one operation leads to the next LCA enables the estimation of the cumulative environmental impacts resulting from all stages in the product life cycle, often including impacts not considered in more traditional analyses (e.g., raw material extraction, material transportation, ultimate product disposal, etc.) By including the impacts throughout the product life cycle, LCA provides a comprehensive view of the environmental aspects of the product or process and a more accurate picture of the true environmental trade-offs in product and process selection (SIAC / EPA, 2006)

10 Why use LCA? Policy development Strategic decision making Economic / market advantage Process improvement Legal compliance Hotspot identification Scientific understanding

11 An LCA can help decision-makers select the product or process that results in the least impact to the environment business strategy or government policy This information can be used with other factors, such as cost and performance data to select a product or process business strategy LCA data identifies the transfer of environmental impacts from one media to another (e.g., eliminating air emissions by creating a wastewater effluent instead) and/or from one life cycle stage to another (e.g., from use and reuse of the product to the raw material acquisition phase) government policy Analysis of the contribution of the life cycle stages to the overall environmental load, usually with the aim to prioritize improvements of products or processes process improvement

12 Comparison between products for internal or external communications business strategy, market advantage LCA can help to identify ways to reduce environmental impacts and make cost savings business strategy, market advantage LCA can be used to assess compliance with environmental legislation legal compliance Badge of acceptance (eco-label in EU) market advantage, legal compliance Environmental management certification (ISO 14001) business strategy, market advantage, hotspot identification Specific category impacts (carbon footprint, water audit, energy audit, LULUCF) hotspot identification, scientific understanding

13 LCA Helps to Avoid Shifting Environmental Problems Can study an entire product system avoid sub-optimization For example, when selecting between two rival products Option 1 generates less solid waste Option 2 consumes more energy LCA might reveal that Option 1 creates larger cradle-to-grave environmental impacts across air, water, land Option 2 produces less cradle-to-grave environmental impact Helps us avoid focusing on one impact at the cost of all others (note, the increased prevelence of single impact LCA (e.g. Carbon Footprint) is undermining this advantage)

14 A brief history of LCA 1960 s World Energy Conference in Coca-Cola - comparison of different beverage containers to determine which had the least environmental impact and consumed least natural resources 1970s The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al 1972) and A Blueprint for Survival (Goldsmith et al 1972) - the effects of changing populations on demand for raw materials and energy resources

15 Process became known as Resource and Environmental Profile Analysis (USA) or Ecobalance (Europe) 1980 s fading influence of the oil crisis, environmental concerns shifted to issues of hazardous and household waste management 1985 EC Environment Directorate (DG X1) issued the Liquid Food Container Directive which charged companies with monitoring the energy and raw materials consumption and solid waste generation of liquid food containers 1988 solid waste becomes a global issue 1990 s concerns grew over misuse of eco-labelling. State Attorneys General in the USA denounced the use of LCA results to promote products until uniform methods for conducting such assessments were developed

16 1995 EU through JRC starts to formulate coherent approach to LCA ISO14000 series developed to standardise LCA 2002 the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) joined forces with the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) to launch the Life Cycle Initiative 2006 updated ISO standards (14040 and 14044) Many commercial, academic and policy studies have been prepared and published since the late 1990 s.

17 ISO family of LCA standards Principles and Framework Requirements and Guidelines Environmental labels and declarations General principles Environmental labels and declarations Type III environmental declarations Principles and procedures Sustainability in building construction Environmental declaration of building products Environmental management systems Guidelines for incorporating eco-design Environmental management Integrating environmental aspects into product design and development Greenhouse gases Carbon footprint of products Requirements and guidelines for quantification and communication (There are many others, but these are some of the key ones)

18 A quick run through the methodology 1. Goal and Scope 2. Life Cycle Inventory 3. Life Cycle Impact Assessment 4. Interpretation

19 To define the system ask the following: 1. Do I need to cover the entire life cycle to achieve the goal? (for comparisons only those bits believed to be different) 2. How will the study be used? (if comparisons are effected by reference flow then must include all contributors for each flow) 3. What ancillary materials are required for the product, material or service to be delivered? (anything that is likely to contribute to the burden must be defined as a secondary contributor) 4. What extras are required to ensure that a product can actually deliver its function or service? (these become secondary contributors)

20 1. Goal and Scope Goal: The following should be unambiguously stated: the intended application the reasons for carrying out the study the intended audience whether the results are intended to be used in comparative assertions Scope: The following should be considered and described: the product system to be studied the functions of the product system the functional unit the system boundary allocation procedures LCIA methodology and types of impacts interpretation to be used data requirements assumptions value choices and optional elements limitations data quality requirements type of critical review, if any type of the report required for the study

21 Functions of the product or system It is necessary to define what the product or system does: What does a bottle do? What is a bicycle for? Why is milk produced? What is bioethanol for? Why is packaging placed over foods? Why is silver plating used? What does the factory actually produce? What does the farm produce? Is there more than one function?

22 The Functional Unit Much care has to be given to defining the functional unit Simple comparisons are not always possible Can you compare a reusable glass milk bottle with a disposable carton? Carton = 1 use and dispose Bottle = 10 uses, 9 washings and dispose What is the functional unit? Perhaps packing and delivering 1000 l of milk 1000 x 1 L cartons or 100 x 1 L bottles (reference flow)

23 2. Life Cycle Inventory The qualitative and quantitative data for inclusion in the inventory shall be collected for each unit process that is included within the system boundary. The collected data, whether measured, calculated or estimated, are utilized to quantify the inputs and outputs of a unit process

24 LCI - Data collection Questionnaires Internet / databases (examples) (listing of databases) (guest user) (useful info) (food and agriculture) lca.plasticseurope.org/index.htm (plastic materials) (must register, useful) (suggested links) cpmdatabase.cpm.chalmers.se (try it) Reports (government, business, sectoral, NGO) Journal papers (links to data stored on Internet)

25 3. Life Cycle Impact Assessment The LCIA phase shall include the following mandatory elements: selection of impact categories, category indicators and characterization models; assignment of LCI results to the selected impact categories (classification); calculation of category indicator results (characterization).

26 Foundation of LCIA: Cause and Effect Basic causes Activities Interventions Environmental effects Societal effects 1. Increase pollutant in air 2. Increased pollutant in animal 3. Decreased fertility of animal = less animals

27 Midpoints vs Endpoints PRE Consult (2008)

28 Example: Global Warming Potential Emissions Emissions Emissions Atmospheric concentration Amount of radiative forcing Temp. increase Risk of species extinction Human life years lost Cause effect pathway Midpoint Endpoints

29 Impact categories Typically, LCIA focuses on three Areas of Protection (AoPs): human health ecological health resource depletion (man-made environment) Now sometimes classified as: Human health Natural environment (resources and life support functions) Man-made environment (monuments, cities, forestry plantations)

30 Global Warming Resource Depletion Water Use

31 4. Interpretation

32 LCA Interpretation issues

33 Example 1: Unilever, Knorr products Meta-product approach (grouping products by types) Carbon footprint Main findings: Biggest hot-spots: production & consumer Processing & Packaging production varied significantly across products Packaging for instant dehydrated soups has a higher contribution than that for cook-up soups Ingredients 36% 34% Processing Manufacture Packaging & Waste 6% Distribution 10% 4% 10% Consumer

34 Example 2: BASF Eco-efficiency Analysis (compares eco & econ pros & cons of alternatives, aggregated and weighted) Over 400 eco-efficiency analyses have been conducted

35 Final observations LCA is deceptively simple! Must be rigorous when using LCA Still have to make assumptions and value choices the standard is to make sure these do not influence the outcome