Dynamic Life Cycle Assessment Framework of Cold Food Storage Facilities

Abstract

The imperative of responding to anthropogenic climate change that is driving energy infrastructure managers to implement resilience enhancing policies such as hourly scale dynamic pricing concurrently drives energy intensive industries to monitor energy usage at higher fidelity. This study proposes a Dynamic Life Cycle Assessment (DLCA) framework specifically tailored for cold food storage facilities which provide essential thermodynamic resilience to the human food web and consumes a large share of the web's energy footprint. Different from the conventional LCA, which delivers a snapshot of the environmental impacts and cost statically, DLCA can accommodate temporal variations in operating conditions and energy usage. It interacts with real-time monitoring data and fluctuating energy rates to provide a more accurate and time-sensitive environment impact and cost evaluation. Key parameters from real-time sensors and reference databases are summarized to lay the foundation for DLCA of cold food storage, like operating power and hours, shipment arrival time, and transportation fuel economy. Its feasibility and reliability are validated by scenarios that simulate different operating conditions, like shift change to utilize off-peak rate and change of packaging materials. The proposed framework allows facility operators and policymakers to pinpoint bottlenecks and seize opportunities for environmental impact and cost reduction.