Abstract
Emergy analysis is an environmental accounting approach which evaluates the memory of the geobiosphere exergy (environmental work) supporting economic systems, e.g. to make a product or service available via the use of natural resources.This paper presents the software SCALE (Software for CALculating Emergy based on life cycle inventories), which allows a rigorous and replicable calculation of the emergy associated to any product or service. The software exploits an ad hoc algorithm, fulfilling the emergy algebra rules, which requires as input the matrix describing a given system of interconnected processes, containing the amount of natural resources used by the output product and its linked technological processes.Starting from this matrix the algorithm performs a graph search across the corresponding network and records the output emergy associated with each of the explored paths linking the input nodes of the network (i.e. the emergy sources) to the output nodes (i.e. the studied products). The algorithm is specifically devised to be used with data coming (in matrix form) from any available life cycle inventory (LCI) database used in life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. Two case studies are presented to illustrate the features of the software: the first one deals with heat generation from grape marc pellets, the second with drinking water production.The use of large LCI databases for emergy calculation using SCALE could contribute to extend the application of emergy systems evaluation in the practice of sustainability science. To our knowledge, this is the first software tool which allows exact calculation of the emergy of products using LCI databases, and therefore it achieves an operational integration between the well-known and standardized LCI methodology and emergy evaluation.
Published Version
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