Generic Life Cycle Assessment Research Articles

Green-house gas mitigation capacity of a small scale rural biogas plant calculations for Bangladesh through a general life cycle assessment.

Calculations towards determining the greenhouse gas mitigation capacity of a small-scale biogas plant (3.2 m3 plant) using cow dung in Bangladesh are presented. A general life cycle assessment was used, evaluating key parameters (biogas, methane, construction materials and feedstock demands) to determine the net environmental impact. The global warming potential saving through the use of biogas as a cooking fuel is reduced from 0.40 kg CO2 equivalent to 0.064 kg CO2 equivalent per kilogram of dung. Biomethane used for cooking can contribute towards mitigation of global warming. Prior to utilisation of the global warming potential of methane (from 3.2 m3 biogas plant), the global warming potential is 13 t of carbon dioxide equivalent. This reduced to 2 t as a result of complete combustion of methane. The global warming potential saving of a bioenergy plant across a 20-year life cycle is 217 t of carbon dioxide equivalent, which is 11 t per year. The global warming potential of the resultant digestate is zero and from construction materials is less than 1% of total global warming potential. When the biogas is used as a fuel for cooking, the global warming potential will reduce by 83% compare with the traditional wood biomass cooking system. The total 80 MJ of energy that can be produced from a 3.2 m3 anaerobic digestion plant would replace 1.9 t of fuel wood or 632 kg of kerosene currently used annually in Bangladesh. The digestate can also be used as a nutrient rich fertiliser substituting more costly inorganic fertilisers, with no global warming potential impact.

Life cycle assessment of wood-based boards produced in Japan and impact of formaldehyde emissions during the use stage

This study aims to conduct a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) of wood-based boards to support environmentally conscious design. The goal is achieved by the following objectives: to produce generic LCA data for production of wood-based boards (cradle-to-gate) and to evaluate the human health impacts through life cycle including the use stage (cradle-to-grave), based on the latest regulations for formaldehyde emissions in Japan. Production data of particleboard (PB), hard fiberboard (HB), medium-density fiberboard (MDF), and insulation fiberboard (IB) were obtained from major manufacturers of wood-based boards in Japan. We evaluated the impact categories of climate change, abiotic resource depletion, human toxicity (cancer and non-cancer effects), and ecotoxicity (cradle-to-grate assessment). For the human health impacts by formaldehyde emissions from PB and MDF in the use stage (40 years), we calculated the impacts through the life cycle (cradle-to-grave assessment), at all grades of formaldehyde emission rates set by the formaldehyde regulation. Cradle-to-gate assessment indicated that adhesives constituted 28–55% of the impacts in all categories for PB and MDF, whereas 74–98% of the impacts resulted from utilities supply for HB and IB. In particular, heat supply from wood boilers accounted for more than 92% of human health (non-cancer) and 71% of ecotoxicity impacts in HB. Cradle-to-grave assessment of PB and MDF, which satisfy strict regulations on formaldehyde emissions (<0.005 mg/m2/h), demonstrated that impacts on human health (total of cancer and non-cancer effects) were decreased by more than 90% compared with a conventional product (0.15 mg/m2/h). The production stage impacts of the products meeting the string regulations were more than half of the total owing to the lower formaldehyde emissions in the use stage. Generic LCA data for wood-based board production (cradle-to-gate) in Japan are calculated. Significant impacts are adhesives for PB and MDF and utility supply for HB and IB. The cradle-to-grave assessment of PB and MDF revealed that shifting to low-formaldehyde emission products has markedly reduced impacts on human health. We recommend preferentially improving the environmental performance of the production process of wood-based boards in countries with strict regulations on formaldehyde emissions.

Using site-specific life cycle assessment methodology to evaluate Chinese wastewater treatment scenarios: A comparative study of site-generic and site-specific methods

This study was conducted to investigate whether the environmental impact assessment of wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) varies with different life cycle assessment (LCA) methods. A full-scale WWTP in China was investigated in this LCA analysis using a generic LCA method, CML, and a China-specific method, e-Balance. Specifically, environmental impact were examined and compared for four effluent treatment levels: no treatment, basic treatment, intermediate treatment and tertiary treatment. The results revealed great variation between the no treatment scenarios and between the tertiary treatment scenarios. The inclusion or exclusion of chemical oxygen demand (COD) as an independent impact category was identified as the main reason for the disparate results with respect to the no treatment scenarios. The absence of toxicity-based impact categories in the database associated with e-Balance method resulted in the lower environmental impact assessment for tertiary treatment scenario of e-Balance than CML method. We concluded that site-generic LCA methods might generate outcome bias when evaluating cases with obvious regional features, and that regionalized LCA methods are needed to deal with cases having an obvious impact on the regional environment.

Assessing wastewater treatment in Latin America and the Caribbean: Enhancing life cycle assessment interpretation by regionalization and impact assessment sensibility

Life cycle assessment (LCA) was applied to evaluate two wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) scenarios in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC): extended aeration (EA) and pond system (PS). The main goal was to compare the environmental performance of two WWTP technologies across all environmental impact categories in selected methods when developing new WWTP projects. As a complementary goal, we analyzed how regionalization enhances LCA interpretation through a case study illustrating the spatial variability of WWTP results for 22 Latin American and Caribbean countries.A generic LCA relying on averaged primary data from 158 WWTPs was first performed based on three LCIA methodologies: ReCiPe, IMPACT World+ (IW+) and Impact 2002+. The results were used to identify the parameters that most influence the impact scores and test the sensitivity of the choice of LCIA methodology on the conclusions. While EA is the most impactful scenario for the human health (HH) and ecosystem quality (EQ) indicators according to Impact 2002+, ReCiPe considers it to be the least impacting option. This is mainly due to the fact that ReCiPe includes the contribution of global warming impacts at the damage level whereas IMPACT 2002+ does not. For the same reason, IW+ favours EA for the HH indicator, which is dominated by global warming impacts. However, for EQ, the PS scenario scores better because of the lower relative importance of global warming impacts (GWP) as compared to eutrophication impacts (FE) at the damage level. Both the IW+ and ReCiPe methodologies point to a trade-off between the two impact categories, which dominate the impact scores for this area of protection. A sensitivity analysis was therefore carried out at the inventory level considering regional grid electricity mixes and at the impact assessment level characterizing eutrophying emissions from WWTPs with the regional CFs for the 22 LAC countries provided by the IW+ model. Results from the IW+ analysis showed that the operating conditions of WWTP in countries where 43–80% of electricity is produced from fossil fuel tend to favour PS for the EQ and HH damage categories. Operating conditions in countries with an electricity mix of over 60% hydropower favour EA due to the significant decrease in greenhouse gas emissions for the EQ and HH damage categories. The location where a WWTP operates also influences the results of the impact assessment. For example, locations with higher eutrophication characterization factors such as Brazil, where the residence time of water is higher, do not tend to favour scenarios with higher eutrophying emissions such as EA with higher EQ impact scores as compared to PS. We concluded that regionalization, both of the inventory and characterization factors, show the potential for adding relevance and discriminating power to the LCA. To address regionalization it in standard LCA practice we propose a pragmatic and stepwise iterative approach that makes it possible to regionalize the greatest contributing inventory and the most impactful assessment flow. Nevertheless, it is important to note that we only addressed the uncertainty related to known spatial variability and that it may be of major interest to apply a similar stepwise approach to any other type of uncertainty.

Greenhouse gas emissions from round wood production in Japan

Wood has a long-standing history as an industrial material and fuel. Generic life cycle assessment data is therefore needed to assess the quantitative environmental impact of wood. The aim of this study was to estimate cradle-to-gate greenhouse gas emissions for round wood production of four common Japanese tree species. This study focused on Japanese cedar (Cryptomeria japonica), hinoki cypress (Chamaecyparis obtusa), Japanese larch (Larix kaempferi) and Sakhalin fir (Abies sachalinensis) because these four tree species constitute more than 80% of total round wood production in Japan. This study encompassed all major forestry activities, such as planting, thinning and final felling. In addition to these activities, indirect processes, such as construction of forest roads, were also included. The functional unit used for this study was 1 m3 over bark of green wood (ob). All 47 prefectures were modeled in order to investigate the site characteristics across Japan. Activity data such as yield per area, required seedling numbers, and thinning method were collected for each tree species and for each prefecture. By combining actual surveyed data and simulation data, information collection challenges on variations in sites and time were overcome. The results of this study suggested that greenhouse gas emissions relating to round wood production of Japanese cedar, hinoki cypress, Japanese larch, and Sakhalin fir were 21.7, 25.9, 24.9 and 25.5 kg-CO2e/m3 ob, respectively. The weighted average value for all of Japan was estimated to be 23.0 kg-CO2e/m3 ob. The amount of temporal carbon storage for these tree species was calculated as 585–762 kg-CO2e/m3 ob. The results also revealed large variation between different prefectures across Japan. Regarding hinoki cypress, for example, the largest greenhouse gas emissions and land use values as an inventory indicator among evaluated prefectures were approximately 1.5 times and 2.7 times larger than the smallest emissions and land use values, respectively. A prefecture with a higher share of heavy forestry machinery tended to indicate relatively higher greenhouse gas emissions. A comprehensive analysis of the target geographical area is therefore required to produce values representative of the region of interest. Among the processes assessed, the final felling process contributed to the largest portion of greenhouse gas emissions in all tree species. An improvement of the energy efficiency of this process is therefore needed. Improving labor productivity would reduce greenhouse gas emissions resulting from commuting workers.

A framework to reduce product environmental impact through design optimization for additive manufacturing

Additive Manufacturing (AM) also known as 3D printing technology has drawn increasing attention from the industrial world. It provides the capability of freeform fabrication to achieve high complexity as well as significant reduction of a supply chain which further enhances the profit margin for manufacturers. However, while claiming on the advantage on the environmental aspect, there is very limited research on the environmental impact of AM technologies. Most of existing environmental assessment models for AM processes are developed based on a general Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) framework. Due to the limited scope and boundary of these models, design results are usually taken as the input. These existing models may work well for traditional manufacturing processes. However, when it comes to AM process, these methods are no longer valid, since the design freedoms which may have a great impact on sustainability are always neglected. To deal with this issue, a general framework which can integrate a design stage in LCA for minimizing the product environmental impact of AM process in particular for binder-jetting process is proposed. The detailed description of each major stage of the proposed framework is presented. This framework has been applied to evaluate the environmental impact of fabricating an engine bracket by binder-jetting process. In this case study, a comparison of environmental impact between CNC and binder-jetting fabrication process is made. The result shows that binder-jetting consumes significantly less energy and produce less CO2 to produce a topologically optimized part than CNC milling for the same product. This case study demonstrates a key role of design optimization in the proposed framework. This proposed framework can be further modified for other typical AM process in the future.

A bibliometric overview of Brazilian LCA research

We bibliometrically evaluated the scientific literature outlined around Brazilian life cycle assessment (LCA). Our aim is twofold: (1) Analyze the Brazilian scientific literature on LCA, forming a current view of how the LCA methodology is applied in the country; (2) within this view, trace the evolution of themes, characterize institution collaboration, and indicate major influences in Brazilian LCA community. Data were outlined around academic production and publications, from 1993 to 2015, indexed by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI- SCIE and SSCI) through a specific group of keywords. Initially, a temporal evolution and projection of papers, PhD and Master Theses, were performed. In sequence, indexed papers were analyzed through performance indicators (i.e., number of authors, impact factor, among others) and content evaluation (for instance, major addressed themes). Finally, a mapping of science was performed, with the aid of Cite Space software application, where coword (and evolution), cocollaboration (and evolution), and cocitation maps were created. The survey identified 429 documents divided among international and national papers, PhD and Master Theses. From those documents, 165 were indexed. In terms of production and performance, the results indicate an undeniable evolution of the Brazilian LCA research, as affirmed by relations solidified through time. The main research field is “LCA application” with 84 % of papers, whereas “LCA methodology” completes the framework. In LCA applications, 25 % of publications are related to Biofuels—divided into bioethanol and biodiesel—which makes it the current dominant LCA research area in Brazil. The collaboration network demonstrates three main institution groups, whereas evolution through the years indicates that this situation may further improve. Influential authors are linked to LCA of biofuels, general LCA guidelines, and methodological LCA developments. Brazilian LCA research has been growing and more complex relations between themes and institutions denote that further developments can be expected. Cocollaboration indicates three main clusters, led by USP, Unicamp, and UFRJ. “Biofuels” is the main research area where sugarcane ethanol and biodiesel from different sources are the domain product systems. Cocitation analysis solidifies this statement, pointing to Isaias Macedo (and other biofuel researchers) as the main author in Brazilian LCA after ISO and Mark Goedkoop.

Sustainable urban water resources management considering life-cycle environmental impacts of water utilization under uncertainty

To improve applicability of life cycle assessment (LCA) in supporting direct and robust decision-making, an integrated approach was developed through incorporating operational research and uncertainty analysis methods within a general LCA framework. The methodology can (a) help comprehensive evaluation of environmental impacts at multiple product-service levels, (b) facilitate the reflections of multiple LCA associated uncertainties and transfer them into consequential decision-making process, and (c) identify desired water allocation schemes for minimizing life-cycle environmental impacts. This represented an improvement upon conventional LCA method, as well as water resources allocation. The developed method was then verified in a water-stressed city (i.e., the City of Dalian), northeastern China. The application indicated that the proposed method was effective in generating desired water supply schemes under uncertainties, reflecting the associated life-cycle environmental impacts, and strengthening capabilities of both LCA and operational research methods. The results also indicated that the top three contributors for life-cycle environmental impacts would be districts of Pulandian and Zhuanghe, and Municipal zone of the city.

NativeLCA - a systematic approach for the selection of environmental datasets as generic data: application to construction products in a national context

Purpose The aim of this paper is to propose guidelines for the selection ofanaccurate lifecycle assessment(LCA) dataset of building products to be used as generic data for a national context. Methods The guidelines are structured within a methodology, called NativeLCA. First, a review of available datasets for construction products is presented such as generic LCA and Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) databases for both national (e.g. France, Germany, Spain etc.) and Europeancontext. Secondly, a method is proposed to choose appropriate generic datasets by means of a hybrid methodology. A metaanalysis is conducted in the first step on the sample of collected datasets from the literature. When relevant, productspecific data (EPD of the different producers) are averaged to represent an average data or existing generic data are adapted to be more suitable for the context. Then, a data quality assessment enables to rank the different datasets according to the goal and scope of the study. Results and discussion This study provides consistent guidelines that can be used by building LCA practitioners to select relevant datasets depending on their goal and scope. A full case study for stone wool boards illustrates and demonstrates the applicability and usefulness of the proposed methodology, namely in the selection of a coherent dataset as generic data for a national context. This work highlights the issues in terms of choice and adaptation of existing data for a national context. Industry data cannot be adapted due to confidentiality issues unlike unit process generic data. The use of data quality indicators then helps to select the relevant generic data for each context according to user needs. Conclusions While further efforts are needed to develop regional and sector-specific LCA databases adapted for each national context, the proposed guidelines showed that the current use or adaptation of existing data, if consistently done, can lead practitioners to increase the reliability of building LCA studies according to their goal and scope definition.

Life cycle assessment of ECF bleaching sequences with ocus on carbon footprint

This paper presents a life cycle assessment (LCA) of bleached eucalyptus kraft pulp production in Brazil. The entire production system was investigated, starting with forestry and ending with bleached pulp at the gate of the pulp mill. Alternative bleaching sequences were compared for three different scenarios using somewhat different elemental chlorine-free (ECF) sequences: Dhot(EPO)DD, Dhot(EPO)DP, and aZeDP. The main difference between the scenarios investigated was the magnitude of the carbon footprint contribution from bleaching. For the base case and chemical island scenarios (both reflecting Brazilian conditions), the contribution was 15%-18% of the total carbon footprint. For the ecoinvent scenario, the corresponding share was 34%-41%. The ecoinvent scenario represents generic LCA data for bleaching chemicals. Ecoinvent is a public database commonly included in commercial LCA software. For each scenario, the alternative bleaching sequences studied resulted in similar carbon footprints of the bleached pulp. A comparison of the data from the different scenarios showed a large range of carbon footprints for the chemicals used for pulp bleaching. It is crucial to select data sets that are relevant in terms of geography and technology. The most dominant contributors to the carbon footprint of the unbleached pulp were forestry and pulp production. Although the focus has been on carbon footprints, the contributions to other environmental effects commonly included in LCAs were also assessed and only minor differences between the alternative bleaching sequences were found.

Environmental Impacts and Benefits of Smart Home Automation: Life Cycle Assessment of Home Energy Management System

This paper discusses the life-cycle environmental impact of Home Energy Management System (HEMS), in terms of their potential benefits and detrimental impacts. It is the expectation that adapting smart home automation (SHA) would lead to reduced electricity usage in the household and overall environmental advantages. The purpose of this research was to quantify the negative environmental impacts of SHA and balance them with their benefits. The evaluation of SHA has been done by conducting a generic Life cycle assessment study using SimaPro programme and the EcoInvent database. The LCA study concluded that the largest environmental impact of HEMS is the use-phase electricity consumption of home automation devices. The paper concludes that the energy payback time of home automation in term of the electricity consumption of the devices is negative by 1.6 years. The largest part of this is due to the energy consumption of smart plugs. Therefore, the paper concludes that in terms of home automation, we need to find the balance between what we actually need to control and the resulting energy consumption of the control system.

Potential Environmental Impacts from the Metals in Incandescent, Compact Fluorescent Lamp (CFL), and Light-Emitting Diode (LED) Bulbs

Artificial lighting systems are transitioning from incandescent to compact fluorescent lamp (CFL) and light-emitting diode (LED) bulbs in response to the U.S. Energy Independence and Security Act and the EU Ecodesign Directive, which leads to energy savings and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. Although CFLs and LEDs are more energy-efficient than incandescent bulbs, they require more metal-containing components. There is uncertainty about the potential environmental impacts of these components and whether special provisions must be made for their disposal at the end of useful life. Therefore, the objective of this study is to analyze the resource depletion and toxicity potentials from the metals in incandescent, CFL, and LED bulbs to complement the development of sustainable energy policy. We assessed the potentials by examining whether the lighting products are to be categorized as hazardous waste under existing U.S. federal and California state regulations and by applying life cycle impact-based and hazard-based assessment methods (note that "life cycle impact-based method" does not mean a general life cycle assessment (LCA) but rather the elements in LCA used to quantify toxicity potentials). We discovered that both CFL and LED bulbs are categorized as hazardous, due to excessive levels of lead (Pb) leachability (132 and 44 mg/L, respectively; regulatory limit: 5) and the high contents of copper (111,000 and 31,600 mg/kg, respectively; limit: 2500), lead (3860 mg/kg for the CFL bulb; limit: 1000), and zinc (34,500 mg/kg for the CFL bulb; limit: 5000), while the incandescent bulb is not hazardous (note that the results for CFL bulbs excluded mercury vapor not captured during sample preparation). The CFLs and LEDs have higher resource depletion and toxicity potentials than the incandescent bulb due primarily to their high aluminum, copper, gold, lead, silver, and zinc. Comparing the bulbs on an equivalent quantity basis with respect to the expected lifetimes of the bulbs, the CFLs and LEDs have 3-26 and 2-3 times higher potential impacts than the incandescent bulb, respectively. We conclude that in addition to enhancing energy efficiency, conservation and sustainability policies should focus on the development of technologies that reduce the content of hazardous and rare metals in lighting products without compromising their performance and useful lifespan.

Benchmarking the Environmental Performance of theJatrophaBiodiesel System through a Generic Life Cycle Assessment

In addition to available country or site-specific life cycle studies on Jatropha biodiesel we present a generic, location-independent life cycle assessment and provide a general but in-depth analysis of the environmental performance of Jatropha biodiesel for transportation. Additionally, we assess the influence of changes in byproduct use and production chain. In our assessments, we went beyond the impact on energy requirement and global warming by including impacts on ozone layer and terrestrial acidification and eutrophication. The basic Jatropha biodiesel system consumes eight times less nonrenewable energy than conventional diesel and reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 51%. This result coincides with the lower limit of the range of reduction percentages available in literature for this system and for other liquid biofuels. The impact on the ozone layer is also lower than that provoked by fossil diesel, although eutrophication and acidification increase eight times. This study investigates the general impact trends of the Jatropha system, although not considering land-use change. The results are useful as a benchmark against which other biodiesel systems can be evaluated, to calculate repayment times for land-use change induced carbon loss or as guideline with default values for assessing the environmental performance of specific variants of the system.

Efficient algorithms for Life Cycle Assessment, Input-Output Analysis, and Monte-Carlo Analysis

As Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Input-Output Analysis (IOA) systems increase in size, computation times and memory usage can increase rapidly. The use of efficient methods of solution allows the use of a wide range of analysis techniques. Some techniques, such as Monte-Carlo Analysis, may be limited if computational times are too slow. In this article, I describe algorithms that substantially reduce computation times and memory usage for solving LCA and IOA systems and performing Monte-Carlo analysis. The algorithms are based on well-established iterative methods of solving linear systems and exploit the power series expansion of the Leontief inverse. The algorithms are further enhanced by using sparse matrix algebra. The algorithms presented in this article reduce computational time and memory usage by orders of magnitude, while still retaining a high degree of accuracy. For a 3225×3225 LCA system, the algorithm reduced computation time from 70s to 0.06s while retaining an accuracy of 10−3%. Storage was reduced from 166 megabytes to 1.8 megabytes. The algorithm was used to perform a Monte-Carlo analysis on the same system with 1,000 samples in 90s. I also discuss various issues of power series convergence for general LCA and IOA systems and show that convergence will generally hold due to the mathematical structure of LCA and IOA systems. By exploiting the mathematical structure of LCA and IOA iterative techniques substantially reduced the computational times required for solving LCA and IOA systems and for performing Monte-Carlo simulations. This allows more wide-spread implementation analysis techniques, such as Monte-Carlo analysis, in LCA and IOA. It is suggested that algorithms, such as the ones described in this article, should be implemented in LCA packages. Various checks can be used to verify that computational errors are kept to a minimum.

Spatialised fate factors for nitrate in catchments: Modelling approach and implication for LCA results

The challenge for environmental assessment tools, such as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is to provide a holistic picture of the environmental impacts of a given system, while being relevant both at a global scale, i.e., for global impact categories such as climate change, and at a smaller scale, i.e., for regional impact categories such as aquatic eutrophication. To this end, the environmental mechanisms between emission and impact should be taken into account. For eutrophication in particular, which is one of the main impacts of farming systems, the fate factor of eutrophying pollutants in catchments, and particularly of nitrate, reflects one of these important and complex environmental mechanisms. We define this fate factor as: the ratio of the amount of nitrate at the outlet of the catchment over the nitrate emitted from the catchment's soils. In LCA, this fate factor is most often assumed equal to 1, while the observed fate factor is generally less than 1. A generic approach for estimating the range of variation of nitrate fate factors in a region of intensive agriculture was proposed. This approach was based on the analysis of different catchment scenarios combining different catchment types and different effective rainfalls. The evolution over time of the nitrate fate factor as well as the steady state fate factor for each catchment scenario was obtained using the INCA simulation model. In line with the general LCA model, the implications of the steady state fate factors for nitrate were investigated for the eutrophication impact result in the framework of an LCA of pig production. A sensitivity analysis to the fraction of nitrate lost as N2O was presented for the climate change impact category. This study highlighted the difference between the observed fate factor at a given time, which aggregates both storage and transformation processes and a “steady state fate factor”, specific to the system considered. The range of steady state fate factors obtained for the study region was wide, from 0.44 to 0.86, depending primarily on the catchment type and secondarily on the effective rainfall. The sensitivity of the LCA of pig production to the fate factors was significant concerning eutrophication, but potentially much larger concerning climate change. The potential for producing improved eutrophication results by using spatially differentiated fate factors was demonstrated. Additionally, the urgent need for quantitative studies on the N2O/N2 ratio in riparian zones denitrification was highlighted.

Generic LCA-methodology applicable for buildings, constructions and operation services—today practice and development needs

Environmental improvement in the building sector will be crucial for the societies ecological sustainability development. Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is one of the well-known tools used ad hoc for ecological sustainable development. In the implementation of a generic LCA methodology applicable on constructions, the most complex abstraction level for the functional output will focus on the building operation usefulness, which regards services rather than construction properties. Furthermore, constructions or parts of it can be regarded as a streamlined application of an LCA methodology operating on the more complex service building level. A number of significant characteristics valid for a generic LCA methodology for buildings have been put forward and then checked in accordance with “today's practice”, represented by five different LCA concepts utilised for buildings. On this basis, current practice but also development needs have been identified on the following themes; service coverage, life-cycle definition, time dependence (coverage), life-cycle inventory and life-cycle impact assessment.

Life Cycle Impact assessment of land use based on the hemeroby concept

The impact category ‘land use’ describes in the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology the environmental impacts of occupying, reshaping and managing land for human purposes. Land use can either be the long-term use of land (e.g. for arable farming) or changing the type of land use (e.g. from natural to urban area). The impact category ‘land use’ comprises those environmental consequences, which impact the environment due to the land use itself, for instance through the reduction of landscape elements, the planting of monocultures or artificial vegetation, or the sealing of surfaces. Important environmental consequences of land use are the decreasing availability of habitats and the decreasing diversity of wildlife species. The assessment of the environmental impacts of land use within LCA studies is the objective of this paper. Land use leads to a degradation of the naturalness of the area utilised. In this respect the naturalness of any area can be defined as the sum of land actually not influenced by humans and the remaining naturalness of land under use. To determine the remaining naturalness of land under use, this study suggests applying the Hemeroby concept. “Hemeroby is a measure for the human influence on ecosystems” (Kowarik 1999). The Hemeroby level of an area describes the intensity of land use and can therefore be used to characterise different types of land use. Characterization factors are proposed, which allow calculating the degradation of the naturalness of an area due to a specific type of land use. Since the resource ‘nature/naturalness’ is on a larger geographical scale by far not homogeneous, the assessment of land use needs to be regionalised. Therefore, the impact category ‘land use’ has been subdivided into the impact sub-categories ‘land use in European biogeographic regions’. Following the general LCA framework, normalization values for the impact sub-categories are calculated in order to facilitate the evaluation of the characterization results with regard to their share in a reference value. Weighting factors, which enable an aggregation of the results of the different land use sub-categories and make them comparable to other impact categories (e.g. climate change or acidification) are suggested based on the assumption that the current land use pattern in the European biogeographic regions is acceptable.