Adapting the LCA framework to environmental assessment in land planning

Purpose

Since the implementation of the European directive (EC/2001/42) on strategic environmental assessment, an ex ante evaluation has become mandatory for plans and programs. This requirement could have significant consequences for the environment. Local authorities, who are in charge of land planning issues, must therefore conduct such assessments. However, they are faced with lack of uniform methodology. The aim of this paper is thus to propose a methodological framework for the required environmental assessment stages in land planning.

Methods

Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been identified as a promising tool to perform environmental assessment at a meso-level (i.e., territories). Yet, the standardized LCA framework has never been used for assessing the environmental impacts of a territory as such, which can be explained by the complexity that its application would involve. Four major methodological bottlenecks have been identified in this paper, i.e., (1) functional unit definition, (2) boundary selection, (3) data collecting, and (4) the refinement of the life cycle impact assessment phase in order to provide useful indicators for land planning. For each of these challenges, recommendations have been made to adapt the analytical framework of LCA.

Results and discussion

A revised framework is proposed to perform LCA of a territory. One of the major adaptations needed concerns the goal and scope definition phase. Henceforth, the association of a territory and the studied land planning scenario, defined by its geographical boundaries and its interactions with other territories, will be designated as the reference flow in LCA. Consequently, two kinds of indicators will be determined using this approach, i.e., (1) a vector of environmental impacts generated (conventional LCA) and (2) a vector of land use functions provided by the territory for different stakeholders (e.g., provision of work, recreation, culture, etc.). This revised framework has been applied to a theoretical case study in order to highlight its utility in land planning.

Conclusions

This work is a first step in the adaptation of the LCA framework to environmental assessment in land planning. We believe that this revised framework has the potential to provide relevant information in decision-making processes. Nonetheless, further work is still needed to broaden and deepen this approach (i.e., normalization of impacts and functions, coupled application with GIS, uncertainties, etc.).     

Choice of land reference situation in life cycle impact assessment

Purpose

Land use life cycle impact assessment is calculated as a distance to target value—the target being a desirable situation defined as a reference situation in Milà i Canals et al.’s (Int J Life Cycle Assess 12(1):2–4, 2007) widely accepted framework. There are several reference situations. This work aims to demonstrate the effect of the choice of reference situation on land impact indicators.

Methods

Various reference situations are reported from the perspective of the object of assessment in land in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies and the modeling choices used in life cycle land impact indicators. They are analyzed and classified according to additional LCA modeling requirements: the type of LCA approach (attributional or consequential), cultural perspectives (egalitarian, hierarchist or individualist), and temporal preference. Sets of characterization factors (CF) by impact pathway, land cover, and region are calculated for different reference situations. These sets of CFs by reference situation are all compared with a baseline set. A case study on different crop types is used to calculate impact scores from different sets of CFs and compare them.

Results and discussion

Comparing the rankings of the CFs from two different sets present inversions from 5% to 35% worldwide. Impact scores of the case study present inversions of 10% worldwide. These inversions demonstrate that the choice of a reference situation may reverse the LCA conclusions for the land use impact category. Moreover, these reference situations must be consistent with the different modeling requirements of an LCA study (approach, cultural perspective, and time preference), as defined in the goal and scope.

Conclusions

A decision tree is proposed to guide the selection of a consistent and suitable choice of reference situation when setting other LCA modeling requirements.

     

Land use impacts on biodiversity in LCA: a global approach

Purpose

Land use is a main driver of global biodiversity loss and its environmental relevance is widely recognized in research on life cycle assessment (LCA). The inherent spatial heterogeneity of biodiversity and its non-uniform response to land use requires a regionalized assessment, whereas many LCA applications with globally distributed value chains require a global scale. This paper presents a first approach to quantify land use impacts on biodiversity across different world regions and highlights uncertainties and research needs.

Methods

The study is based on the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)/Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) land use assessment framework and focuses on occupation impacts, quantified as a biodiversity damage potential (BDP). Species richness of different land use types was compared to a (semi-)natural regional reference situation to calculate relative changes in species richness. Data on multiple species groups were derived from a global quantitative literature review and national biodiversity monitoring data from Switzerland. Differences across land use types, biogeographic regions (i.e., biomes), species groups and data source were statistically analyzed. For a data subset from the biome (sub-)tropical moist broadleaf forest, different species-based biodiversity indicators were calculated and the results compared.

Results and discussion

An overall negative land use impact was found for all analyzed land use types, but results varied considerably. Different land use impacts across biogeographic regions and taxonomic groups explained some of the variability. The choice of indicator also strongly influenced the results. Relative species richness was less sensitive to land use than indicators that considered similarity of species of the reference and the land use situation. Possible sources of uncertainty, such as choice of indicators and taxonomic groups, land use classification and regionalization are critically discussed and further improvements are suggested. Data on land use impacts were very unevenly distributed across the globe and considerable knowledge gaps on cause–effect chains remain.

Conclusions

The presented approach allows for a first rough quantification of land use impact on biodiversity in LCA on a global scale. As biodiversity is inherently heterogeneous and data availability is limited, uncertainty of the results is considerable. The presented characterization factors for BDP can approximate land use impacts on biodiversity in LCA studies that are not intended to directly support decision-making on land management practices. For such studies, more detailed and site-dependent assessments are required. To assess overall land use impacts, transformation impacts should additionally be quantified. Therefore, more accurate and regionalized data on regeneration times of ecosystems are needed.     

Is land use impact assessment in LCA applicable for forest biomass value chains? Findings from comparison of use of Scandinavian wood,agro-biomass and peat for energy

Purpose

A framework for the inclusion of land use impact assessment and a set of land use impact indicators has been recently proposed for life cycle assessment (LCA) and no case studies are available for forest biomass. The proposed methodology is tested for Scandinavian managed forestry; a comparative case study is made for energy from wood, agro-biomass and peat; and sensitivity to forest management options is analysed.

Methods

The functional unit of this comparative case study is 1 GJ of energy in solid fuels. The land use impact assessment framework of the United Nations Environment Programme and the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (UNEP-SETAC) is followed and its application for wood biomass is critically analysed. Applied midpoint indicators include ecological footprint and human appropriation of net primary production, global warming potential indicator for biomass (GWP_bio-100) and impact indicators proposed by UNEP-SETAC on ecosystem services and biodiversity. Options for forest biomass land inventory modelling are discussed. The system boundary covers only the biomass acquisition phase. Management scenarios are formulated for forest and barley biomass, and a sensitivity analysis focuses on impacts of land transformations for agro-biomass.

Results and discussion

Meaningful differences were found in between solid biofuels from distinct land use classes. The impact indicator results were sensitive to land occupation and transformation and differed significantly from inventory results. Current impact assessment method is not sensitive to land management scenarios because the published characterisation factors are still too coarse and indicate differences only between land use types. All indicators on ecosystem services and biodiversity were sensitive to the assumptions related with land transformation. The land occupation (m²a) approach in inventory was found challenging for Scandinavian wood, due to long rotation periods and variable intensities of harvests. Some suggestions of UNEP-SETAC were challenged for the sake of practicality and relevance for decision support.

Conclusions

Land use impact assessment framework for LCA and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) indicators could be applied in a comparison of solid bioenergy sources. Although forest bioenergy has higher land occupation than agro-bioenergy, LCIA indicator results are of similar magnitude or even lower for forest bioenergy. Previous literature indicates that environmental impacts of land use are significant, but it remains questionable if these are captured with satisfactory reliability with the applied LCA methodology, especially for forest biomass. Short and long time perspectives of land use impacts should be studied in LCA with characterisation factors for all relevant timeframes, not only 500 years, with a forward-looking perspective. Characterisation factors need to be modelled further for different (forest) land management intensities and for peat excavation.     

Coupling GIS and LCA for biodiversity assessments of land use

Purpose  

Geospatial details about land use are necessary to assess its potential impacts on biodiversity. Geographic information systems (GIS) are adept at modeling land use in a spatially explicit manner, while life cycle assessment (LCA) does not conventionally utilize geospatial information. This study presents a proof-of-concept approach for coupling GIS and LCA for biodiversity assessments of land use and applies it to a case study of ethanol production from agricultural crops in California.     

Coupling GIS and LCA for biodiversity assessments of land use

Purpose  

Geospatial details about land use are necessary to assess its potential impacts on biodiversity. Geographic information systems (GIS) are adept at modeling land use in a spatially explicit manner, while life cycle assessment (LCA) does not conventionally utilize geospatial information. This study presents a proof-of-concept approach for coupling GIS and LCA for biodiversity assessments of land use and applies it to a case study of ethanol production from agricultural crops in California.     

Uncertainties in the application of the species area relationship for characterisation factors of land occupation in life cycle assessment

Purpose  

Uncertainties in land use damage modeling are recognized, but hardly quantified in life cycle assessment (LCA). The objective of this study is to analyze the influence of various key assumptions and uncertainties within the development of characterisation factors (CFs) for land use in LCA. We assessed the influence on land use CFs of (1) parameter uncertainty and (2) the choice for a constant or land use-specific species accumulation factor z and including or excluding regional effects.     

Life cycle assessment in the minerals and metals sector: a critical review of selected issues and challenges

Background, aim and scope

The mining sector provides materials that are essential elements in a wide range of goods and services, which create value by meeting human needs. Mining and processing activities are an integral part of most complex material cycles so that the application of life cycle assessment (LCA) to minerals and metals has therefore gained prominence. In the past decade, increased use of LCA in the mineral and metal sector has advanced the scientific knowledge through the development of scientifically valid life cycle inventory databases. Though scientifically valid, LCA still needs to depend on several technical assumptions. In particular, measuring the environmental burden issues related to abiotic resource depletion, land use impacts and open-loop recycling within the LCA are widely debated issues. Also, incorporating spatial and temporal sensitivities in LCA, to make it a consistent scientific tool, is yet to be resolved. This article discusses existing LCA methods and proposed models on different issues in relation to minerals and metals sector.

Main features

A critical review was conducted of existing LCA methods in the minerals and metals sector in relation to allocation issues related to indicators of land use impacts, abiotic resource depletion, allocation in open-loop recycling and the system expansions and accounting of spatial and temporal dimension in LCA practice.

Results

Evolving a holistic view about these contentious issues will be presented with view for future LCA research in the minerals and metals industry. This extensive literature search uncovers many of the issues that require immediate attention from the LCA scientific community.

Discussion

The methodological drawbacks, mainly problems with inconsistencies in LCA results for the same situation under different assumptions and issues related to data quality, are considered to be the shortcomings of current LCA. In the minerals and metals sector, it is important to increase the objectivity of LCA by way of fixing those uncertainties, for example, in the LCA of the minerals and metals sector, whether the land use has to be considered in detail or at a coarse level. In regard to abiotic resource characterisation, the weighting and time scales to be considered become a very critical issue of judgement. And, in the case of open-loop recycling, which model will best satisfy all the stake holders? How the temporal and spatial dimensions should be incorporated into LCA is one of the biggest challenges ahead of all those who are concerned. Addressing these issues shall enable LCA to be used as a policy tool in environmental decision-making. There has been enormous debate with respect to on land use impacts, abiotic resource depletion, open-loop recycling and spatial and temporal dimensions, and these debates remain unresolved. Discussions aimed at bringing consensus amongst all the stake holders involved in LCA (i.e. industry, academia, consulting organisations and government) will be presented and discussed. In addition, a commentary of different points of view on these issues will be presented.

Conclusions

This review shall bring into perspective some of those contentious issues that are widely debated by many researchers. The possible future directions proposed by researchers across the globe shall be presented. Finally, authors conclude with their views on the prospects of LCA for future research endeavours.

Recommendations and outlook

Specific LCA issues of minerals and metals need to be investigated further to gain more understanding. To facilitate the future use of LCA as a policy tool in the minerals and metals sector, it is important to increase the objectivity with more scientific validity. Therefore, it is essential that the issues discussed in this paper are addressed to a great detail.     

Co-product allocation in life cycle assessments of seafood production systems: Review of problems and strategies

Background, Aim and Scope  

As Life Cycle Assessment is being increasingly applied to study fisheries and aquaculture systems, the LCA methodology must be adapted to address the unique aspects of these systems. The focus of this methodological paper is the specific allocation problems faced in studying seafood production systems and how they have been addressed to date.     

Assessing agricultural soil acidification and nutrient management in life cycle assessment

Purpose  

This paper describes part of the first detailed environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of Australian red meat (beef and sheep meat) production. The study was intended to assist the methodological development of life cycle impact assessment by examining the feasibility of new indicators for natural resource management (NRM) issues relevant to soil management in agricultural LCA. This paper is intended to describe the NRM indicators directly related to agricultural soil chemistry.     

Comparing land use impacts using ecosystem quality,biogenic carbon emissions,and restoration costs in a case study of hydropower plants in Norway

Purpose

Habitat destruction is today the most severe threat to global biodiversity. Despite decades of efforts, there is still no proper methodology on how to assess all aspects of impacts on biodiversity from land use and land use changes (LULUC) in life cycle analysis (LCA). A majority of LCA studies on land extensive activities still do not include LULUC. In this study, we test different approaches for assessing the impact of land use and land use change related to hydropower for use in LCA and introduce restoration cost as a new approach.

Methods

We assessed four hydropower plant projects in planning phase (two upgrading plants with reservoir and two new run-of-river plants) in Southern Norway with comparable geography, biodiversity, and annual energy production capacity. LULUC was calculated for each habitat type, based on mapping of present and future land use, and was further allocated to energy production for each power plant. Three different approaches to assess land use impact were included: ecosystem scarcity/vulnerability, biogenic greenhouse gas (bGHG) emissions, and the cost of restoring affected habitats. Restoration cost represents a novel approach to LCA for measuring impact of LULUC.

Results and discussion

Overall, the three approaches give similar rankings of impacts: larger impact for small and new power plants and less for larger and expanding existing plants. Reservoirs caused a larger total area affected. Permanent infrastructure has a more similar absolute impact for run-of-river and reservoir-based hydropower, and consequently give relatively larger impact for smaller run-of-river hydropower. All approaches reveal impacts on wetland ecosystems as most important relative to other ecosystems. The methods used for all three approaches would benefit from higher resolution data on land use, habitats, and soil types. Total restoration cost is not accurate, due to uncertainty of offset ratios, but relative restoration costs may still be used to rank restoration alternatives and compare them to the costs of biodiversity offsets.

Conclusions

The different approaches assess different aspects of land use impacts, but they all show large variation of impact between the studied hydropower plants, which shows the importance of including LULUC in LCA for hydropower projects. Improved data of total restoration cost (and cost accounting) are needed to implement this approach in future LCA.

     

Discussion on methods to include prevention activities in waste management LCA

Purpose

Waste prevention has been assigned increasing attention worldwide during recent years, and it is expected to become one of the core elements of waste management planning in the near future. In this framework, this paper presents and discusses two possible LCA approaches for the evaluation of the environmental and energetic performance of municipal solid waste (MSW) management systems which include the effects of waste prevention activities.

Methods

The two approaches are conceived for the comparison of waste management scenarios including waste prevention activities with baseline scenarios without waste prevention. For both of them, the functional unit is defined and the system boundaries are described with reference to different typologies of waste prevention activities identified in an extensive review. The procedure for the calculation of the LCA impacts of scenarios is also reported and an example illustrating the processes to be included in system boundaries for a specific waste prevention activity is provided.

Results and discussion

The presented approaches lead to the same result in terms of difference between the LCA impacts of a waste prevention scenario and of a baseline one. However, because of the partially different upstream system boundaries, different values of the impacts of single scenarios are obtained and the application of the two approaches is more suitable in different situations and in analyses with different purposes. The methodological aspects that can complicate the applicability of the two approaches are discussed lastly.

Conclusions

The environmental and energetic performance of MSW management scenarios including waste prevention activities can be evaluated with the two LCA approaches presented in this paper. They can be used for many purposes such as, among the most general, evaluating the upstream and downstream environmental consequences of implementing particular waste prevention activities in a given waste management system, complementing waste reduction indicators with LCA-based indicators and supporting with quantitative evidence the strategic and policy relevance of waste prevention.     

End-of-life and waste management in life cycle assessment—Zurich, 6 December 2011

Introduction  

Waste management is a key component in society's strategy to mitigate the adverse effects of its economic activities. Through its comprehensive system approach, life cycle assessment (LCA) is frequently put forward as a powerful tool for the assessment of waste management activities. However, many methodological challenges regarding the environmental assessment of waste treatment systems still remain, and consensus is still far from being reached in areas like the definition of (temporal) system boundaries, life cycle inventory generation, selection and use of environmental indicators, and interpretation and communication of the LCA results.     

Characterisation of social impacts in LCA

Background, aim, and scope  

The authors have suggested earlier a framework for life cycle impact assessment to form the modelling basis of social LCA. In this framework, the fundamental labour rights were pointed out as obligatory issues to be addressed, and protection and promotion of human dignity and well-being as the ultimate goal and area of protection of social LCA. The intended main application of this framework for social LCA was to support management decisions in companies who wish to conduct business in a socially responsible manner, by providing information about the potential social impacts on people caused by the activities in the life cycle of a product. Environmental LCA normally uses quantitative and comparable indicators to provide a simple representation of the environmental impacts from the product lifecycle. This poses a challenge to the social LCA framework because due to their complexity, many social impacts are difficult to capture in a meaningful way using traditional quantitative single-criterion indicators. A salient example is the violation of fundamental labour rights (child labour, discrimination, freedom of association, and right to organise and collective bargaining, forced labour). Furthermore, actual violations of these rights somewhere in the product chain are very difficult to substantiate and hence difficult to measure directly.     

Assessment of land use impact on biodiversity

Goal, Scope and Background  

Land use and changes in land use have a significant impact on biodiversity. Still, there is no agreed upon methodology for how this impact should be assessed and included in LCA. This paper presents a methodology for including land use impact on biodiversity in Life Cycle Impact Assessment and provides a case example from forestry operations in Norway.     

Land use impact assessment in the construction sector: an analysis of LCIA models and case study application

Purpose

Land use is a potentially important impact category in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of buildings. Three research questions are addressed in this paper: Is land use a decisive factor in the environmental impact of buildings?; Is it important to include the primary land use of buildings in the assessment?; and How does the environmental performance of solid structure and timber frame dwellings differ when assessed by distinct available models for quantifying land use impacts?

Methods

This paper compares several operational land use impact assessment models, which are subsequently implemented in an LCA case study comparing a building constructed using timber frame versus a solid structure. Different models were used for addressing the different research questions.

Results and discussion

The results reveal that contrasting decisions may be supported by LCA study results, depending on whether or not and how land use is included in the assessment. The analysis also highlights the need to include the building land footprint in the assessment and to better distinguish building locations in current land use impact assessment models.

Conclusions

Selecting land use assessment models that are most appropriate to the goals of the study is recommended as different models assess different environmental issues related to land use. In general, the combination of two land use assessment methods for buildings is recommended, i.e. soil organic matter (SOM) of Milà i Canals and Eco-indicator 99.     

Comparative environmental performance of semi-trailer load boxes for grain transport made of different materials

Background, aim, and scope  

Semi-trailers with load boxes are the most important mode of grain transport by land in the world. Load boxes can be produced with different materials such as: wood, steel, and synthetic material. They are responsible for effectiveness retention and quality of grains during the transport. Among the main aspects to be considered and valued when selecting materials for load boxes are the final mass of the semi-trailer, loss of grains, and mechanical properties. Environmental performance is another important aspect to be taken into account for developing and selecting new materials in this kind of application. This study presents a comparative environmental evaluation of load boxes built from two different materials (a wood panel and a three-layer synthetic (TLS) panel). Mass balance and life cycle assessment (LCA) were used in this study.