Comparative life cycle assessment and life cycle costing of lodging in the Himalaya

Purpose

The main aim of the study is to assess the environmental and economic impacts of the lodging sector located in the Himalayan region of Nepal, from a life cycle perspective. The assessment should support decision making in technology and material selection for minimal environmental and economic burden in future construction projects.

Methods

The study consists of the life cycle assessment and life cycle costing of lodging in three building types: traditional, semi-modern and modern. The life cycle stages under analysis include raw material acquisition, manufacturing, construction, use, maintenance and material replacement. The study includes a sensitivity analysis focusing on the lifespan of buildings, occupancy rate and discount and inflation rates. The functional unit was formulated as the ‘Lodging of one additional guest per night’, and the time horizon is 50 years of building lifespan. Both primary and secondary data were used in the life cycle inventory.

Results and discussion

The modern building has the highest global warming potential (kg CO_2-eq) as well as higher costs over 50 years of building lifespan. The results show that the use stage is responsible for the largest share of environmental impacts and costs, which are related to energy use for different household activities. The use of commercial materials in the modern building, which have to be transported mostly from the capital in the buildings, makes the higher GWP in the construction and replacement stages. Furthermore, a breakdown of the building components shows that the roof and wall of the building are the largest contributors to the production-related environmental impact.

Conclusions

The findings suggest that the main improvement opportunities in the lodging sector lie in the reduction of impacts on the use stage and in the choice of materials for wall and roof.

     

Status of life cycle assessment (LCA) activities in the nordic region

The status of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) activities in the Nordic Region (period 1995-97) is presented, based on more than 350 reported studies from industrial companies and research institutes in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Finland. A large number of industrial sectors is represented, with car components, building materials, pulp and paper products, electronic components and packaging as the most important ones. All aspects of LCA methodology are used: 90% use impact assessment, 80% impact assessment and valuation step. In most studies, more than one valuation method is used for ranking environmental impacts. LCA studies are well integrated in the business activities in many large Nordic corporations. From the early attempts, more familiar with LCA methodology, LCA has been integrated in strategy development, product development, process development and, to some extent, marketing. LCA has not only been used in the strict sense presented in the ISO 14040-43 standards. The systems approach, which is the basis for LCA, has also been modified and used in Sustainable Product Development, and in Environmental Performance Indicator and Product Declarations development. Future applications should be within Environmental Impact Assessments.     

Integrating life cycle assessment (LCA) and quantitative risk assessment (QRA) to address model uncertainties: defining a landfill reference case under varying environmental and engineering conditions

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Model uncertainties in life cycle assessment (LCA) can arise due to the lack or limited knowledge of the system (epistemic), or due to the...     

Uncertainty in LCA case study due to allocation approaches and life cycle impact assessment methods

Purpose

Uncertainty is present in many forms in life cycle assessment (LCA). However, little attention has been paid to analyze the variability that methodological choices have on LCA outcomes. To address this variability, common practice is to conduct a sensitivity analysis, which is sometimes treated only at a qualitative level. Hence, the purpose of this paper was to evaluate the uncertainty and the sensitivity in the LCA of swine production due to two methodological choices: the allocation approach and the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method.

Methods

We used a comparative case study of swine production to address uncertainty due to methodological choices. First, scenario variation through a sensitivity analysis of the approaches used to address the multi-functionality problem was conducted for the main processes of the system product, followed by an impact assessment using five LCIA methods at the midpoint level. The results from the sensitivity analysis were used to generate 10,000 independent simulations using the Monte Carlo method and then compared using comparison indicators in histogram graphics.

Results and discussion

Regardless of the differences between the absolute values of the LCA obtained due to the allocation approach and LCIA methods used, the overall ranking of scenarios did not change. The use of the substitution method to address the multi-functional processes in swine production showed the highest values for almost all of the impact categories, except for freshwater ecotoxicity; therefore, this method introduced the greater variations into our analysis. Regarding the variation of the LCIA method, for acidification, eutrophication, and freshwater ecotoxicity, the results were very sensitive. The uncertainty analysis with the Monte Carlo simulations showed a wide range of results and an almost equal probability of all the scenarios be the preferable option to decrease the impacts on acidification, eutrophication, and freshwater ecotoxicity. Considering the aggregate result variation across allocation approaches and LCIA methods, the uncertainty is too high to identify a statistically significant alternative.

Conclusions

The uncertainty analysis showed that performing only a sensitivity analysis could mislead the decision-maker with respect to LCA results; our analysis with the Monte Carlo simulation indicates no significant difference between the alternatives compared. Although the uncertainty in the LCA outcomes could not be decreased due to the wide range of possible results, to some extent, the uncertainty analysis can lead to a less uncertain decision-making by demonstrating the uncertainties between the compared alternatives.

     

Improving the environmental performance of bio-waste management with life cycle thinking (LCT) and life cycle assessment (LCA)

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - Globally, many countries worldwide aim at increasing the environmental sustainability of waste management activities. Special attention is...     

LCA of the timber sector in Ghana: preliminary life cycle impact assessment (LCIA)

Purpose  

Most life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) approaches in life cycle assessment (LCA) are developed for western countries. Their LCIA approaches and characterization methodologies for different impact categories may not be necessarily relevant to African environmental conditions and particularly not for the timber sector in Ghana. This study reviews the relevance of existing impact categories and LCIA approaches, and uses the most relevant for the timber sector of Ghana.     

Integrating cost-benefits analysis and life cycle assessment of green roofs: a case study in Florida

Abstract

Multiple environmental benefits can be achieved by using a green roof instead of conventional roofs. To better understand the LCA and cost-effectiveness of a green roof, a case study was performed. Two energy models, one with conventional white roof and the other with green roof, were created using eQUEST software to compare the influence of green roof on building energy consumption. The results indicated that the application of a green roof reduced annual space heating and cooling electricity consumption by 9500 kWh (2.2 kWh per square meter). The LCA shows that by using an extensive green roof in lieu of a conventional white roof the LCA measures at the product, construction, and end-of-life stages increased due to the use of additional layers. However, these increases are offset by the reduction of LCA measures at the use stage such that the overall environmental impacts of green roof is less than that of conventional roof. To find out the cost-effectiveness of green roof, a 50-year cost-benefits analysis was conducted. The analysis showed that the net savings of the green roof is negative compared to the white roof it replaced due to its higher initial cost and follow on maintenance cost.     

Bringing nutrition and life cycle assessment together (nutritional LCA): opportunities and risks

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment -     

Application of life cycle assessment to the LCA case studies single superphosphate production

Goal, Scope and Background  

There is a competition between wet and thermal routes for phosphate fertilizers manufacture. In the Brazilian case, the thermal route is represented by thermophosphate. This fertilizer is considered the most adequate one for Brazilian agricultural conditions; its main restriction is the intensive consumption of energy necessary for its production. The wet route uses sulfuric acid to direcdy produce the single superphosphate (SSP) or the intermediate phosphoric acid, which will be used to result in triple superphosphate (TSP) and ammonium phosphate production. The main restriction of the wet route is the large amount of phosphogypsum generated in phosphoric acid production. Envisaged is an environmental comparison of both routes using LCA methodology. This paper presents the LCA for SSP production. The goal of the study is to establish the Environmental Profile of this fertilizer. Eight impact categories were selected for the study. The system boundaries was defined for a ‘cradle to gate’ approach, including extraction of natural resources, intermediate products, and production.     

System delimitation in life cycle assessment (LCA) of aquaculture: striving for valid and comprehensive environmental assessment using rainbow trout farming as a case study

Purpose

Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been in the last one decade used as a standardized and structured method of evaluating the environmental impacts of aquaculture arising throughout the entire life cycle. However, aquaculture system hardly applied system expansion whenever a multifunctional process has more than one functional flow. The objective of this study is to develop a methodological approach for consequential LCA and model the system expansion of the different affected processes of aquaculture.

Methods

In this study, we have considered the system expansion in two different stages in the life cycle of the fish production: aquacultural stage, with case study of trout aquaculture, and feed manufacturing stage. Rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) production was used as a case study to illustrate the method using different scenarios of system expansion.

Results and discussion

The results of the six different scenarios of system expansion showed considerable variation among the different scenarios towards the environmental impact of trout aquaculture. Regarding global warming potential, the contributions vary by 5-fold; for acidification, variations were up to 32 %, and for land use, the contributions varied from 0.6 to 1.3 m²a/kg of trout demanded in Germany. It appeared that eutrophication is similar in all the scenarios considered.

Conclusions

This article showed that system expansion can be used to handle the allocation issues of the co-products in the rainbow trout supply chain, thus, can be effectively used when analyzing the environmental consequences of changes in future rainbow trout production. Furthermore, consequential LCA may be important when comparing the impacts of alternative meal choices of aquafeeds. This may increase the incentive for speedy replacement of alternative meals, thus, reducing the dependence on the utilization of the limiting fisheries resources.     

Comparative life cycle assessment (LCA) of Tilapia in two production systems: semi-intensive and intensive

Purpose

In order to meet the upscaling demand of food products worldwide, the aquaculture industry has been expanding within the last few years in developed countries. Major expansions of aquaculture farming occurred in many developed countries such as Bangladesh, Indonesia, and Egypt. Egypt ranks ninth in fish farming production worldwide and first on Africa. Egypt has the largest aquaculture industry in Africa which represents two-thirds of African aquaculture production. Tilapia production accounts for 75.5 % of aquaculture production in Egypt. Tilapia aquaculture production has grown exponentially in recent decades until it reached 4.5 million tonnes in 2012 placing Egypt as the second worldwide producer of tilapia after China. The production of tilapia is practiced in different production systems including intensive and semi-intensive systems. These production systems require different resources and impact differently on the environment. The aim of the current study was to model the environmental performance of tilapia production and compare semi-intensive and intensive production systems. The main questions were the following: What are the different impacts of tilapia production on the environment? Which production system is more environmentally friendly? What are the preferable practices for better environmental performance and sustainable ecofriendly industry of Tilapia production?

Methods

Life cycle assessment (LCA) was employed to determine the environmental impacts of tilapia production and compare semi-intensive and intensive production systems. Data for life cycle inventory were collected from two case study farms for tilapia production in Egypt. Four impact categories were taken into consideration: Global Warming Potential (GWP), Acidification Potential (AP), Eutrophication Potential (EP), and Cumulative Energy Demand (CED).

Results and discussion

LCA revealed that production of tilapia in intensive farming has less impact on GWP, AP, and CED, while its impact on EP is higher than in semi-intensive farming. The identified impacts from 1-tonne live weight production of tilapia were the following: GWP 960.7 and 6126.1 kg CO₂ eq; AP 9.8 and 24.4 kg SO₂ eq; EP 14.1 and 6.3 kg PO₂ eq; and CED 52.8 GJ and 238.3 GJ eq in intensive and semi-intensive systems, respectively.

Conclusions

Fish meal production and energy consumption were the major contributors to different impact indicators in both systems. An overall improvement in environmental performance for tilapia production can be achieved by novel feed formulations that have better environmental performance. Energy consumption is a major area for improvement as well, as proper energy management practices will reduce the overall impact on the environment.

     

Life cycle assessment and life cycle costing of road infrastructure in residential neighbourhoods

Purpose

The built environment consists of a huge amount of infrastructure, such as roads and utilities. The objective of this paper is to assess the life cycle financial and environmental impact of road infrastructure in residential neighbourhoods and to analyse the relative contribution of road infrastructure in the total impact of neighbourhoods.

Methods

Various road sections are analysed based on an integrated life cycle approach, combining life cycle costing and life cycle assessment. To deal with complexity, a hierarchic assessment structure, using the principles of the “element method for cost control”, is implemented. Four neighbourhood models with diverse built densities are compared to gain insight in the relative impact of road infrastructure in neighbourhoods.

Results and discussion

The results reveal important financial and environmental impact differences between the road sections analysed. Main contributors to the life cycle financial and environmental impact are the surface layer and electrical and piped services. The contribution of road infrastructure to the total neighbourhood impact, ranging from 2 to 9 % of the total cost, is relatively limited, compared to buildings, but not negligible in low built density neighbourhoods.

Conclusions

Good spatial planning of the neighbourhood is recommended to reduce the amount of road infrastructure and the related financial and environmental impact. The priority should be to design denser neighbourhood layouts, before decreasing the financial and environmental impact of the road sections.

     

Apeironpro, software for life cycle assessment (LCA) and environmental performance evaluation (EPE)

Background, Aims and Scope  In the world there are more than thirty LCA software products, but they do not have inventories or an evaluation method either with regional applicability, especially for Colombia. A special software for Life Cycle Assessment and the Environmental Performance Evaluation has been developed, which considers the environmental impacts generated by products during their life cycle and processes involving productive activities. It accounts with inventories applicable to Colombia, for processes and services like electrical energy production, transport and waste disposition. The Ecoscarcity evaluation method was adapted to Colombia with national legislation and agreements for polluting reduction signed by country and the EPI (Environmental Points of Impact) was established for 353 substances. Methods  The software allows users to use the methodology which corresponds to the standard ISO 14030 and 14040 directives. The database uses the SPOLD international format. For ApeironPro software, database information used from monitoring air emissions and effluents on factories in the region were realized by the Environmental Research Group from Pontificia Bolivariana University and secondary type information has been obtained starting from studies realized by environmental organizations and factories in the country which are interested in the management of quality environmental indicators. The antiquity of the information was restricted from the last 5 years, 1998 to 2003, in order to possess temporal representativity. The Ecoscarcity method uses information of the Environmental Ministry and Environmental Institutes of Colombia for the actual current load (F), and target norm for total load (F_k), using information with national legislation and agreements for polluting reduction signed by the respective countries. The software was designed in Web ambience with the database in MySQL, while the programming language was JAVA from Sun Microsystem. Results  The software has inventories for energy (electricity from coal, natural gas, fuel oil, hydroelectricity) transport (mean air, truck, motor bus), processes (plastics, rubber, sugar, paints production, detergent production, combustion in heaters, foundry of copper, iron, gold), waste disposal (incineration and landfill). Discussion  The Ecoscarcity method was analyzed for seven impact categories: climate change, acidification, stratospheric ozone depletion, photo-oxidant formation, eutrophication, ecotoxicity and depletion of abiotic resources (coal, oil, natural gas, copper, nickel). Conclusions  For Colombia, the highest environmental impact is associated with the ozone layer depletion (235.7 Ecopoints/g) while the lowest is associated with depletion of coal (8.6 × 10⁻⁷ Ecopoints/g), although this is reasonable since Colombia is the tenth largest producer of coal in the world. Recommendations and Perspectives  Latin America and Colombia need more inventories for their processes and to identify the more significant environmental impacts of their industries. This work is an initial step in the research about Life Cycle Assessment and can also improve the work in ecolabels for Colombia.     

Integrating life cycle assessment and life cycle cost: a review of environmental-economic studies

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - The purpose of this document is to carry out a critical review of the existing literature by specifically addressing the following: (i) the...     

Assessing freshwater ecotoxicity of agricultural products in life cycle assessment (LCA): a case study of wheat using French agricultural practices databases and USEtox model

Purpose  

A life cycle assessment (LCA) was conducted on winter wheat, based on real agricultural practices databases, on a sample divided into four production scenarios. The main objectives of this study are (1) to assess the environmental impact of winter wheat, using an LCA covering field practices, and the transport and storage of grain until it is sold to a miller; (2) to use the USEtox model (Rosenbaum et al. in Int J Life Cycle Assess 13:532–546, 2008) to assess the part of the total freshwater ecotoxicity impact due to pesticide use, its variability among plots, and to identify the active ingredients with the strongest impact; (3) and with the help of fungicide, insecticide, herbicide experts, to identify active ingredients to replace these high-impact pesticides and estimate the effect of such a substitution on total freshwater ecotoxicity.     

Applications of nutritional functional units in commodity-level life cycle assessment (LCA) of agri-food systems

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment - The nutritional quality of final products is attracting an increased level of attention within life cycle assessment (LCA) literature of...     

International Molybdenum Association (IMOA) life cycle assessment program and perspectives on the LCA harmonization effort

Purpose

In 2001, the International Molybdenum Association (IMOA) initiated their life cycle assessment (LCA) program performing cradle-to-gate life cycle inventories (LCIs) of three molybdenum metallurgical products, followed by LCIs of eight molybdenum chemicals and an update to the metallurgical LCIs. From 2012 to 2014, IMOA participated in a multi-metal industry initiative to harmonize the methodological approach to metal-related LCAs. This paper describes some of IMOA’s conclusions formed from its program and, coupled with its involvement in the multi-metal initiative, provides some lessons learned.

Methods

For this paper, IMOA evaluated the benefits of its LCI program, including its ability to communicate effectively with member companies and stakeholders on the development, use, and application of life cycle data. Likewise, IMOA developed the competence to recognize and provide input on potentially inappropriate use of LCA. IMOA performed a literature review to highlight some of the scientific research using the molybdenum LCI data. IMOA also reviewed the metal industry’s guidance document to provide its perspective on it, including similarities, differences, and substantiation of elements of the four topic areas.

Results and discussion

The metal industry’s guidance document identified four topic areas as essential for alignment with respect to metal-related LCAs: (1) system boundaries, (2) coproduct modelling, (3) life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), and (4) metals recycling modelling. IMOA is largely in agreement with the approaches described in the document. The paper provides examples of how these have been applied to LCAs on Mo-bearing products as well as examples of how some LCA work can benefit from the guidance document.

Conclusions

Having taken part in the harmonization effort, IMOA is poised to educate its member companies and stakeholders about some of the challenging issues encountered in LCA and will continue to lead through active industry participation. IMOA supplies its LCI data via a formal request process which enables open dialogue with stakeholders and LCA practitioners while providing IMOA with insights into how its products fit into the broader lifecycle context and facilitating stakeholders’ awareness of LCA and metals.

     

Life cycle assessment (LCA) of industrial milk production

A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) was carried out for milk production extending from the origin of the inputs to the agricultural step to the consumer phase and the waste management of the packaging. Three Norwegian dairies of different sizes and degree of automation were studied. The main objectives were to find any hot spots in the life cycle of milk, to determine the significance of the dairy size and degree of automation, and to study the influence of transport. The agriculture was found to be the main hot spot for almost all the environmental themes studied, although the dairy processing, packaging, consumer phase and waste management were also of importance. The consumer phase was the main contributor to photo-oxidant formation and important regarding eutrophication. The small dairy was found to have a greater environmental impact than the middle-sized and the largest dairies. The transport did not have any major influence.     

Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) as a tool for identification and assessment of environmental aspects in environmental management systems (EMS)

Purpose  

The paper presents a discussion on the possibilities of using LCA in identification and assessment of environmental aspects in environmental management systems based on the requirements of the international ISO14001 standard and the European Union EMAS regulation. Some modifications of LCA methodology are proposed in Part 1 while the results of a review of environmental aspects for 36 organisations with implemented EMS are presented in Part 2 of the article.