Abstract
Hybrid life cycle assessment (LCA) has been developed for almost 40 years, but its applications are still limited to certain products/industries. This study endeavors to expand the accessibility of hybrid LCA from specialists to practitioners by developing a streamlined and semi-automated hybrid LCA data compilation routine in an input–output virtual laboratory. Data from the Australian Life Cycle Inventory Database (AusLCI) and the Australian Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory are used to demonstrate this routine. A hybridized AusLCI database is generated and used to calculate the hybrid carbon footprint intensities (CFIs) of all AusLCI processes. How different assumptions and settings on the hybridization influence the difference between process-based and hybrid results is further investigated and discussed intensively. Major inputs from the IO system are identified, and the sensitivity and uncertainty of hybrid results against unit price variations and EEIO table uncertainties are quantified via Monte Carlo simulations. On average, process-based CFIs are 21–32% lower than the corresponding hybrid CFIs, which is larger than the uncertainties resulting from either price variation, EEIO data uncertainty or scenarios on how the hybridization is conducted. Although the data are Australian specific, the underlying procedure is applicable to any country as long as suitable data are available.
Highlights
Hybrid life cycle assessment—combining conventional process-based LCA and environmentally extended input–output analysis (EEIOA) in a variety of ways—has been developed for almost 40 years (Crawford et al 2018)
Integrated Hybrid life cycle assessment (hLCA) tends to be a more sophisticated way of combining process-based LCA and EEIOA, its application is still limited to certain specific products and/or industries (Inaba et al 2010; Wiedmann et al 2011; Bush et al 2014) due to the complexity incurred by compiling the cut-off matrices (Suh and Lippiatt 2012; Yang et al 2017; Majeau-Bettez et al 2014)
Following Eq (1) with ybeing a column of 1 s, hybrid carbon footprint intensities (CFIs) of all Australian National Life Cycle Inventory Database (AusLCI) processes are calculated after initial adjustment, upper- and lower-bound double-counting correction (DCC), respectively
Summary
Hybrid life cycle assessment (hLCA)—combining conventional process-based LCA and environmentally extended input–output analysis (EEIOA) in a variety of ways—has been developed for almost 40 years (Crawford et al 2018). Input–output based hybrid LCA is developed to mitigate the aggregation errors of EEIOA by either disaggregating a sector in the EEIO table into subsectors using process-specific information (Wiedmann et al 2011; Wolfram et al 2016; Teh et al 2017) or by using process data to add new sectors to the EEIO table (Malik et al 2015, 2016). This approach is typically tailored to specific products and/ or industries and can not be done for many products/industries at the same time. Integrated hLCA tends to be a more sophisticated way of combining process-based LCA and EEIOA, its application is still limited to certain specific products and/or industries (Inaba et al 2010; Wiedmann et al 2011; Bush et al 2014) due to the complexity incurred by compiling the cut-off matrices (Suh and Lippiatt 2012; Yang et al 2017; Majeau-Bettez et al 2014)
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