Energy and environmental evaluation of greenhouse bell pepper production with life cycle assessment approach

Abstract

Abstract The aim of this study is to evaluate the energy flow and environmental impacts of bell pepper production in greenhouse structure with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. For this purpose, the initial data were collected through face-to-face interviews with greenhouse pepper producers in Tiran and Karvan city that is located in Isfahan province, Iran. In this study, greenhouse gate and one tonne of pepper production were selected as the system boundary and functional unit, respectively. The total input energy was 201709 MJton−1. The energy efficiency, energy productivity, specific energy and net energy gain were found as 0.003, 0.005 kg MJ−1, 201.7 MJ kg−1 and -200909 MJ ton−1, respectively. Ten impact categories including abiotic depletion, acidification, eutrophication, global warming, ozone layer depletion, human toxicity, freshwater aquatic eco-toxicity, marine aquatic eco-toxicity, terrestrial eco-toxicity and photochemical oxidation potential were investigated. The normalization results showed that the marine water eco-toxicity, fresh water eco-toxicity and abiotic resources depletion had the highest values among all impact categories, respectively. Finally, It is concluded that natural gas is one of the main energy consuming inputs and emission sources and considered as environmental hot spot in greenhouse bell pepper production.