Combined Life Cycle Assessment Research Articles

A framework to identify environmental-economic trade-offs by combining life cycle assessment and life cycle costing – A case study of aluminium production

The aim of the study was to identify dependencies between environmental and economic performance applying LCA/LCC-integration. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an established methodology to evaluate the environmental performance of products. For holistic sustainable decision-making, also the economic and social perspectives are important. Economic performance can be assessed with life cycle costing (LCC) and is a major concern in business. As business often associates an improvement in environmental performance with trade-offs in terms of economic efficiency, a joint assessment of LCA and LCC is essential to obtain valid statements about sustainable performance. Few such studies have been conducted so far and no standard exists to integrate LCA and LCC. Conducting a case study of different aluminium production scenarios, the study aimed to propose an adaptable LCA/LCC-integration approach for different actors involved in the life cycle of products to identify environmental-economic trade-offs. The study found that drivers for both costs and environmental impacts varied for the different production sites and that environmental improvements do not automatically entail economic disadvantages. A shift to green electricity supply from the conventional electricity mix for the German primary aluminium producer resulted in a roughly 70% smaller global warming potential (GWP) while costs only slightly increased (0.3%). The Chinese alumina producer lowered his GWP by 11% and his costs by 6% when only sourcing domestic bauxite. The findings revealed the urgency to assess the environmental and economic performance parallelly for identifying potential trade-offs or win-win-situations. A practicable framework for LCA/LCC-integration and for visual result communication of trade-offs meant for decision makers was proposed.

Using behavioural data to assess the environmental impact of electricity consumption of alternate television service distribution platforms

Digital technology and entertainment is a significant driver of electricity use globally, resulting in increased GHG emissions. Research has been conducted on electricity use associated with adigital services, but to date no complete study of television distribution has been conducted. Here we present the first assessment of electricity used for distribution and viewing of television over different distribution platforms terrestrial, satellite, cable and online streaming. We use a novel methodology that combines life cycle assessment techniques with models of the diversity of actual user behaviour, derived from detailed audience monitoring and online behaviour analytics data. This can be applied to assess overall electricity usage for a given media company's services and allows comparison of the electricity demanded per viewerhour of each distribution platform. We apply this to a representative national TV provider - the British Broadcasting Corporation – and show the mean estimate for BBC distribution/viewing electricity use in 2016 is 2171 GWh, resulting in emissions of 1.12 MtCO2e. We show that viewing over streaming, cable and satellite platforms used a mean of 0.17–0.18 KWh per device-hour (88–93 gCO2e) while terrestrial broadcast used a mean of 0.07 kWh (36 gCO2e). We identify home networking equipment and set-top boxes as key hotspots in the system, and show that though streaming is similar in impact to cable and satellite, this is because people use smaller devices to view – meaning the networking equipment in and beyond the home has a higher impact while the end device has a lower one.

From wastewater treatment to water resource recovery: Environmental and economic impacts of full-scale implementation

To reduce greenhouse gas emissions and promote resource recovery, many wastewater treatment operators are retrofitting existing plants to implement new technologies for energy, nutrient and carbon recovery.In literature, there is a lack of studies that can unfold the potential environmental and economic impacts of the transition that wastewater utilities are undertaking to transform their treatment plants to water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs). When existing, literature studies are mostly based on simulations rather than real plant data and pilot-scale results. This study combines life cycle assessment and economic evaluations to quantify the environmental and economic impacts of retrofitting an existing wastewater treatment plant (WWTP), which already implements energy recovery, into a full-scale WRRF with a series of novel technologies, the majority of which are already implemented full-scale or tested through pilot-scales. We evaluate five technology alternatives against the current performance of the WWTP: real-time N2O control, biological biogas upgrading coupled with power-to-hydrogen, phosphorus recovery, pre-filtration carbon harvest and enhanced nitrogen removal. Our results show that real-time N2O control, biological biogas upgrading and pre-filtration lead to a decrease in climate change and fossil resource depletion impacts. The implementation of the real-time measurement and control of N2O achieved the highest reduction in direct CO2-eq emissions (-35%), with no significant impacts in other environmental categories. Biological biogas upgrading contributed to counterbalancing direct and indirect climate change impacts by substituting natural gas consumption and production. Pre-filtration increased climate change reduction by 13%, while it increased impacts in other categories. Enhanced sidestream nitrogen removal increased climate change impacts by 12%, but decreased marine eutrophication impacts by 14%. The reserve base resource depletion impacts, however, were the highest in the plant configurations implementing biological biogas upgrading coupled with power-to-hydrogen. Environmental improvements generated economic costs for all alternatives except for real-time N2O control. The results expose possible environmental and economic trade-offs and hotspots of the journey that large wastewater treatment plants will undertake in transitioning into resource recovery facilities in the coming years.

Utilization of forestry waste materials in British Columbia: Options and strategies

The Canadian province of British Columbia has large forestry resources and therefore provides an informative example of the potential role of bioenergy in mitigating GHG emissions. Even in biomass-rich British Columbia, forestry resources are only sufficient to meet part of the energy demand. This paper compares different energy conversion routes for forestry waste materials: via hydrothermal liquefaction, thermochemical methanol and bioethanol, renewable natural gas, cogeneration of heat and power, heat-only boilers, and power-only generation. The GHG savings, health impacts, minimum selling prices, and GHG abatement costs for each option are estimated by combining life cycle assessment with a discounted cash flow model. The input-based functional unit of 1 oven-dry tonne biomass provides a better basis for comparing possible uses of finite biomass supply than the commonly-used output-based functional unit of 1 GJ bioenergy. Heat-only boiler for district heating gives the highest GHG reduction of 960 kgCO2-eq per oven-dry tonne feedstock, while power-only generation delivers minimal GHG benefit in British Columbia. Heat-only boiler and cogeneration offer the lowest GHG abatement costs (<$-20/tCO2-eq), due to lower costs and higher energy conversion efficiencies, and are already economically viable, but will not use all the available resources because health impacts generated by biomass combustion limit their deployment, despite life cycle health benefits for avoiding hazardous emissions from slash burning of forestry waste materials. Refined biofuel options are much less cost-effective (>$50/tCO2-eq); further technology improvement and policy support are needed to offset the cost disadvantage.

Steps from Zero Carbon Supply Chains and Demand of Circular Economy to Circular Business Cases

The European Green Deal requires a zero-carbon Europe until 2050. Consequently, all processes conducted, and actions taken need to ensure zero carbon emissions. Beside the areas of energy systems, logistics and living, it certainly also includes industry sectors, industrial processes and their entire supply chains. Zero carbon supply chains mean net zero carbon emission from scope 1, 2 and 3. The key question for future business is therefore how to reduce the carbon emissions of all procured components down to zero, beside all procured and consumed energies (scope 1 and 2). A promising approach is a circular economy, if primary produced materials will not be provided carbon neutral or will increase in price. However, today the development of circular business models often is a chicken and egg problem. It needs a clear business case to invest into changes, adaptions, substitutions or life cycle system adjustments of linear products (take, make, dispose) to turn them into circular products or product systems (avoid, re-use, recycle, recover). The paper presents approaches to support companies seeking carbon neutral products in a carbon neutral Europe via identifying business cases for circular products. An evaluation matrix is presented allowing the identification of circularity status depending on the selected products or sector perspective. The matrix contains evaluation criteria based on the circularity building blocks by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. Based on the results, hot spots and weak points are identified and allow entering a six-step-approach for business-case identification. The steps refer to life cycle thinking, quantitative environmental assessment, simulation, creativity methods and end up identifying profitable business cases for circularity. The presented approach combines life cycle assessment, circular economy and the development of business models and is partly developed and applied during the European H2020 project AVANGARD.

Comparative life cycle assessment and costing of an autonomous lawn mowing system with human-operated alternatives: implication for sustainable design improvements

ABSTRACT Due to recent technological advancements, automation and autonomous solutions are gaining increasing popularity. Yet, a lack of in-depth investigations is noticed on the potential environmental benefits and economic repercussions of implementing autonomous systems. The present study aims to fill part of this gap by quantifying the environmental and economic sustainability of a robotic lawn mower, in comparison with human-operated counterparts. Combining life cycle assessment and life cycle costing methodologies, and by defining adequate functional units, building simulation models, and collecting life cycle inventory data, a systematic comparative study between autonomous and conventional lawn mowers is performed on their environmental and economic impacts. Through this multi-indicator analysis, environmental and economic trade-offs between the autonomous and conventional mowing solutions are quantitatively discussed for key relevant usage scenarios, from mowing an average residential yard to maintaining larger fields like a football stadium or a schoolyard. Concretely, sensitivity analyses on key parameters influencing the performance of the autonomous mower have been conducted to evaluate the environmental and economic benefits of an augmented robotic mower. While optimising the path planning of the current robotic mower would lead to the most substantial savings, improvements on the battery performance, cutting width, and speed of the autonomous solution appear as other promising areas for future work.

Integrated Life Cycle Assessment, Life Cycle Costing and Multi Criteria Decision Making for Food Waste Composting Management

The integrated models specifically designed to help decision-making in food waste (FW) composting management through the analysis of previous research studies are reviewed. The integrated models are built predominantly within three decision-supporting tools, which include life-cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing (LCC), and multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM). Different integrated models were discussed and their strengths, limitations, and crucial problems as well as their potential integration were evaluated. Apparently, there has been no in-depth analysis of its approaches and potentialities of combining harmonically the LCA, LCC, and MCDM analysis tools in the FW composting management which taking into consideration multiple stakeholders. Thus, the combined LCA, LCC and MCDM with cluster analysis (CA) is suggested. The concepts underlying the sustainable FW composting management model can be divided into several aspects in terms of environmental friendliness, financial profitability, and social acceptance. This gives an insight and facilitates to waste management sectors to decide on a preferable FW composting management.

Combining Life Cycle Assessment and Circularity Assessment to Analyze Environmental Impacts of the Medical Remanufacturing of Electrophysiology Catheters

Sustaining value after the end-of-life to improve products’ circularity and sustainability has attracted an increasing number of industrial actors, policymakers, and researchers. Medical products are considered to have great remanufacturing potential because they are often designated as single-use products and consist of various complex materials that cannot be reused and are not significant in municipal recycling infrastructure. The remanufacturing of electrophysiology catheters is a well-established process guaranteeing equivalent quality compared to virgin-produced catheters. In order to measure if using a remanufactured product is environmentally beneficial compared to using a virgin product, life cycle assessment (LCA) is often used. However, focusing on one life cycle to inform on the environmental-beneficial use fails to guide policymakers from a system perspective. This study analyzes the environmental consequences of electrophysiology catheters considering two modeling perspectives, the implementation of LCA, including a cut-off approach and combining LCA and a circularity indicator measuring multiple life cycles. Investigating the LCA results of using a remanufactured as an alternative to a newly-manufactured catheter shows that the global warming impact is reduced by 50.4% and the abiotic resource use by 28.8%. The findings from the system perspective suggest that the environmental savings increase with increasing collection rates of catheters.

Feasibility and economic evaluation of grouting materials containing binary and ternary industrial waste

In this study, the feasibility and environmental impact of using zeolite powder (ZP), basalt powder (BP), and unprocessed coarse fly ash (UFA) as grouting materials were evaluated. The rheological properties, workability, and compressive strengths of cementitious systems containing cement, ZP, BP, and UFA were tested, and three-parameter models were used to characterize the relationships between these properties. The resource consumption, electricity consumption, and greenhouse (CO2) and pollution (PM, SO2, and NOx) gas emissions of different grout formulations were evaluated by combining life cycle assessment (LCA) and economic cost assessment. The results showed that the incorporation of ZP, BP, or UFA improved the cohesiveness and bleeding rate of the grout. Some formulas had adverse effects on the rheology and compressive strength. The ternary blends of these mineral admixtures effectively solved this problem. In particular, the blends of BP and UFA not only retained cohesiveness and segregation resistances but also exhibited good rheological properties and compressive strengths.LCA and the economic evaluation indicated that the utilization of ZP and BP reduced the resource and electricity consumption, harmful gas emissions, and economic costs. Among them, BP’s annual production and mining costs were better than those of ZP. The production of UFA had a negative impact on resource consumption and environmental pollution but had the best economic effect among the three waste materials. A blend with 10% BP and 10% UFA was the optimal combination, which could simultaneously meet the requirements of the grouting performance and economic cost.

Evaluating sustainable product alternatives by combining life cycle assessment with full-cost accounting: A highway guardrail case study

Full-cost accounting techniques incorporate the environmental and societal burdens a product generates through its manufacture, use, and disposal into that product’s price. This research generates full-cost prices for functionally equivalent chromated copper arsenate (CCA) treated wood and galvanized steel guardrail posts by combining previously conducted life cycle inventory analyses results with secondary emission valuation data. Based on the analysis, both CCA-treated posts and galvanized steel posts have environmental damage costs associated with emissions generated through the product’s manufacturing, use, and disposal stages. After developing full-cost prices for product alternatives, CCA-treated wood guardrail posts were found to be a more economical and environmentally responsible alternative to galvanized steel. In addition to generating full-cost prices, this research uses Monte Carlo simulation to provide estimates of variability around CCA-treated wood and galvanized steel damage costs.

Method for a Multi-Vehicle, Simulation-Based Life Cycle Assessment and Application to Berlin’s Motorized Individual Transport

The transport sector in Germany causes one-quarter of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. One potential solution to reduce these emissions is the use of battery electric vehicles. Although a number of life cycle assessments have been conducted for these vehicles, the influence of a transport system-wide transition has not been addressed sufficiently. Therefore, we developed a method which combines life cycle assessment with an agent-based transport simulation and synthetic electric-, diesel- and gasoline-powered vehicle models. We use a transport simulation to obtain the number of vehicles, their lifetime mileage and road-specific consumption. Subsequently, we analyze the product systems’ vehicle production, use phase and end-of-life. The results are scaled depending on the covered distance, the vehicle weight and the consumption for the whole life cycle. The results indicate that the sole transition of drive trains is insufficient to significantly lower the greenhouse gas emissions. However, sensitivity analyses demonstrate that there is a considerable potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with higher shares of renewable energies, a different vehicle distribution and a higher lifetime mileage. The method facilitates the assessment of the ecological impacts of complete car-based transportation in urban agglomerations and is able to analyze different transport sectors.

Economic and Environmental Assessment of Carbon Emissions from Demolition Waste Based on LCA and LCC

In China, urban renewal and renovation projects generate a large amount of demolition waste every year, the disposal of which has certain impacts on the environment. Therefore, more effective policies should be implemented for the management of demolition waste. This study combines life cycle assessment (LCA) with life cycle costing (LCC) to analyze the environmental and economic drivers of three different waste disposal scenarios in Guangzhou, China, in the context of carbon trading: S1 (landfilling), S2 (recycled aggregate), and S3 (recycled powder). In this study, the carbon emissions of demolition waste were obtained by LCA, and the carbon emission cost was calculated based on the carbon price in the carbon trading market of Guangdong Province. The LCA results showed that waste recycling can greatly reduce carbon emissions. The results showed that compared to S1, S2 reduced 6.790 × 108 kg CO2 eq. Additionally, S3 reduced 4.172 × 108 kg CO2 eq. compared to S2. The LCC results show that waste recycling can greatly reduce the total costs of the demolition sector, while the production of recycled powder can generate 57.35% of the revenue from recycled aggregate to the recycling plant. This study combines LCA and LCC, and considers environmental factors to assess the economic results using carbon emissions cost, thereby forging a new exploration method in the field of life cycle theory. The findings of this study could provide a basis for the formulation of a new demolition waste management policy. In the case of the gradual implementation of carbon trading, it could also provide new ideas for current demolition waste treatment from economic and environmental perspectives.

Eating away at sustainability. Food consumption and waste patterns in a US school canteen

In order to achieve a sustainable diet, perfect understanding and coordination of the production and consumption aspects of the food system need to be achieved, including inefficiencies as food waste. Food waste rates in developed countries are increasingly perceived as a failure in the system. Within school canteens high levels of food waste are generated, in a location where habits about sustainable consumption should be transmitted to the next generation. This gap between education on best practices and student behavior should be addressed by contextualizing and characterizing meal services within sustainable diets. This research assessed the impacts of food consumption and wastage, including the nutritional characteristics through a case study in a school canteen located in Columbia, Missouri, US. It combines life cycle assessment, environmental life cycle costing, nutritional evaluation, and a food waste audit using weighing, visual assessment, and sorting techniques to estimate the food waste of different canteen users (students and faculty members). The novelty of this research relies on the integration of recognized life cycle thinking methods, including the role of embedded impacts within environmental, cost, and nutritional attributes. Food wasted at the canteen represented between 28 and 53% (by weight) across canteen users of the food served as meals, accounting for 10–35% of nutrients. The highest environmental contribution occurred at the food procurement stage (85%), while the lowest occurred at food preparation (2%). The largest costs are associated with food preparation activities and food purchases (39% meal cost). The embedded food waste impact accounts for 40–57% of the total global warming potential and about 27% of the total cost. Interventions are proposed and evaluated to improve the diet performance, which could be extended to further canteen scenarios.

Improving the economic feasibility of biodiesel production from microalgal biomass via high‐value products coproduction

Microalgal biodiesel has emerged as a promising fuel source, but has still not been adopted commercially. One of the several inherent challenges is its high production cost, which mandates the need to develop an integrated process to produce other valuable coproducts economically. This article combines life cycle assessment and preliminary life cycle cost assessment of a proposed biorefinery, in which a high value product, β-carotene, is coproduced from microalgae with biodiesel. The GaBi 6 environmental management software was employed to investigate the environmental impact associated with the production life cycle. The mass flow rates and the energy consumed in all stages of biodiesel and β-carotene coproduction for the functional unit of 1 kg of biodiesel were assessed. When the coproduction of β-carotene was not taken into consideration, the total energy input for a functional unit of 1.0 kg biodiesel/m2/y and the net energy ratio, that is, energy returned on energy invested were estimated to be 128.1 GWh/y and 0.27, respectively. The life cycle cost analysis showed that although the total production cost associated with coproduction of β-carotene from Dunaliella salina was higher than that of the sole production of biodiesel, it generates a hiked revenue of up to $37 million/y. Over the system lifetime of 10 years, the sole production of biodiesel showed a loss of US$345 million per functional unit, whereas the coproduction of β-carotene achieved a net profit of US$120.7 million per functional unit. This work clearly showed that the coproduction of β-carotene with biodiesel from D. salina overcomes the cost-ineffectiveness resulting from the production of biodiesel alone.

Environmental rebound effect of energy efficiency improvements in Colombian households

Colombia aims to diversify and decarbonize its energy sector by encouraging the use of non-conventional renewable resources. Policies and/or measures to achieve this will presumably help to achieve national and international environmental goals, yet potential rebound effects may reduce its efficacy by triggering additional demand and environmental burdens. One of such rebound effects may take place as household demand rises in response to cheaper electricity prices due to the increasing shares of wind power. This study assesses the environmental rebound effect (ERE) in the household sector from increased shares of wind power into the Colombian power grid, across six environmental impacts and for the period 2020–2030. The method used combines life cycle assessment, input-output modelling, energy system modelling, econometrics, and re-spending modelling. The results show that the ERE has the potential to partially, and even completely, offset any environmental savings (backfire effect), depending on the specific impact, year, and modelling choices considered. The magnitude of the ERE (as the percentage of potential environmental savings that are offset) ranges highly across impacts, from a negligible 1% (eutrophication) to a staggering 9241% (photochemical ozone creation). The ERE has thus the potential to render decarbonization policies largely ineffective, which calls for rebound mitigation policies, such as environmental taxes.

Combining Life Cycle Assessment and Manufacturing System Simulation: Evaluating Dynamic Impacts from Renewable Energy Supply on Product-Specific Environmental Footprints

The eco-efficiency of actual production processes is still one dominating research area in engineering. However, neglecting the environmental impacts of production equipment, technical building services and energy supply might lead to sub-optimization or burden-shifting and thus reduced effectiveness. As an established method used in sustainability management, Life Cycle Assessment aims at calculating the environmental impacts from all life cycle stages of a product or system. In order to cope with shortcomings of the static character of life cycle models and data gaps this approach combines Life Cycle Assessment with manufacturing system simulation. Therefore, the two life cycles of product and production system are merged to assess environmental sustainability on product level. Manufacturing simulation covers the production system and Life Cycle Assessment is needed to relate the results to the final product. This combined approach highlights the influences from dynamic effects in manufacturing systems on resulting life cycle impact from both product and production system. Furthermore, the importance of considering indirect peripheral equipment and its effects on the manufacturing system operation in terms of output and energy demands is underlined. The environmental flows are converted into impacts for the five recommended environmental impact categories. Thus, it can be demonstrate that Life Cycle Assessment can enhance the process simulation and help identify hot-spots along the life cycle. The combined methodology is applied for analysing a case study in fourteen scenarios for the integration of volatile energy sources into energy flexible manufacturing control.

Environmental assessment of food and beverage under a NEXUS Water-Energy-Climate approach: Application to the spirit drinks

The energy-water nexus is a concept widely established but rarely applied to product and, in particular, to food and beverage products, which have a great influence on greenhouse gases emissions. The proposed method considers the main nexus aspects in addition to other relevant aspects such as climate change, which is deeply linked with energy and water systems, and assessing process as well as product. In this framework, this study develops an integrated index (IWECN) that combines life cycle assessment (LCA) and linear programming (LP) to assess energetic, water and climate systems, enabling the identification of those products with minors energetic and water intensity and climate change effects and helping to the decision-making process and to the development of eco-innovation measures. In this case, the product assessed was one bottle (70 cl) of gin and two main hotspots were identified: the production of the glass bottle and the energy requirements of the distillation stage. Based on that, several eco-innovation strategies were proposed: the use of photovoltaic solar energy as energy source and the substitution of the glass bottle by a plastic one and by a tetra brick. The nexus results indicated that the use of solar photovoltaic energy and plastic as bottle material was the best alternative decreasing 58% the IWECN value of the production of one bottle of gin. The sensitivity analysis presented a strong preference for photovoltaic solar energy in comparison with electric power and for the reduction of the glass bottle weight or its substitution by a plastic bottle. The use of the IWECN index is extendable to any product with the aim of facilitating the decision-making process in the development of more sustainable products to introduce them in new green markets.

Sensitivity of operational and environmental benchmarks of retail stores to decision-makers' preferences through Data Envelopment Analysis

Within the framework of multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA), weighting methods are typically used to capture decision-makers' preferences. In this regard, the increasing use of the combined LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) + DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) methodology as an MCDA tool requires an in-depth analysis of how the preferences of decision-makers could affect the outcomes of LCA + DEA studies. This work revisits a case study of 30 retail stores/supply chains located in Spain by applying alternative weighted DEA approaches to evaluate the influence of decision-makers' preferences (weights) on the final outcomes, with a focus on efficiency scores and operational and environmental benchmarks. The ultimate goal is to effectively capture the view of stakeholders when applying LCA + DEA for the sound, sustainability-oriented management of multiple similar entities. Different weight vectors are separately applied to three types of DEA elements: operational inputs, time terms, and divisions. Besides, preferences from three alternative standpoints are considered: company manager through direct rating, and environmental policy-maker and local community through AHP (analytic hierarchy process). A significant influence on efficiency scores and sustainability benchmarks was found when weighting decision-makers' preferences on operational inputs. Additionally, a moderate influence was observed when weighting divisions according to a policy-maker or local community perspective. Although the results are case-specific, they lead to the general recommendation to enrich LCA + DEA studies by following not only an equal-weight approach but also approaches that include the preferences of the stakeholders effectively involved in the study.

A region‐specific environmental analysis of technology implementation of hydrogen energy in Japan based on life cycle assessment

AbstractEnergy systems using renewables with adequate energy carriers are needed for sustainability. Before accelerating technology implementation for the transition to the new energy system, region‐specific implementation effects should be carefully examined as a system. In this study, we aim to analyze an energy system using hydrogen as an energy carrier with the approach of combining life cycle assessment and a regional energy simulation model. The model calculates the emissions, such as CO2, nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), and volatile organic compounds, and their impacts on human health, social assets, primary production, and an integrated index. The analysis quantitatively presented various environmental impacts by region, life cycle stage, and impact category. Climate change was dominant on the integrated index while the other impact categories were also important. Fuel cell vehicles were effective in mitigating local air pollution, especially in high‐population regions where many people are adversely affected. Although technology implementation contributes to mitigating environmental impacts at locations of energy users, it also has possibilities to have negative impacts at locations of device manufacturing and raw material processing. The definition of the regional division was also an important factor in energy system design because the final results of life cycle assessments are highly sensitive to region‐specific characteristics. The proposed region‐specific analysis is expected to support local governments and technology developers in designing appropriate energy systems for regions and building marketing plans for specific targets.

Greenhouse gas emission reduction potential and cost of bioenergy in British Columbia, Canada

The Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) provides an informative case study of bioenergy development, because it relies heavily on fossil fuels but has enormous bioenergy potential. We have examined the potential contribution of bioenergy to reducing BC's GHG emissions. The approach of combining life cycle assessment and economic evaluation to prioritize options should be applicable generally. Biomass availability, including forestry resources, agricultural waste and municipal solid waste, is estimated. Through simplified Life Cycle Assessment, GHG reduction potential of biogas, bioethanol, biofuels from hydrothermal liquefaction, and district heating are quantified, along with the associated GHG reduction costs. The analysis shows that existing biomass resources could yield 110–176 PJ per year, reducing GHG emissions by 13.0–15.7%. Bioenergy from waste streams is already cost-effective and should be prioritized in the short term. However, bioenergy from forestry resources, especially conversion to liquid biofuels, is prohibitively expensive, with GHG reduction cost exceeding CAD $300/t CO2-eq. The total extra cost required to achieve full utilization of BC's biomass resources is estimated as 0.8–2.4 billion dollars. To close the cost gaps between bioenergy and fossil fuels, both technological improvement and external cost adjustment through measures like carbon taxation will be needed.