Traditional Life Cycle Assessment Research Articles

Predictive sustainability analysis applied to an automotive design case study.

The paper deals with a predictive sustainability analysis applied to the design of automotive components in lightweight perspective. The analysis is conducted through the integration of the traditional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology with tailored forecasting algorithms able to provide a predictive evaluation of Climate Change (CC) by elaboration data contained in commercial environmental datasets. The comparison is referred to the entire Life Cycle (LC) of the system (including production, use and End-of-Life) according to a “from cradle to grave approach”.A medium-class car rear crash management system is used as case study, assessing the potential benefits related to the substitution of conventional steel with 6000/7000 series aluminium alloys, along with other minor design changes. Particularly, the study compares the environmental profile of the two solutions based on the CC impact category in application to both an Internal Combustion Engine Vehicle (ICEV) and a Battery Electric Vehicle (BEV).The results show the potentiality of the proposed methodology, highlighting possible improvements/worsenings: new materials and manufacturing technologies adopted in the lightweight rear crash management system entail contrasting environmental effects depending on LC phases, that is, increased CO2eq in production (around 125% - mainly due to the strong energy intensity of aluminium supply chain) and reduced burdens in use and EoL (primarily provided by component mass reduction). That said, the influence of different boundary conditions on the predictive models is significant only for the electricity produced to energize the BEV configuration, leading to an overall variability of comparison results ranging within 3-30% for the BEV case study.

Optimization of the end‐of‐life tire repartition within the European treatment system to minimize its environmental impacts

AbstractThis study contrasts two different approaches to inform European‐scale decision‐making to mitigate the environmental impacts of the end‐of‐life tires (ELT) management system. The first analysis is a traditional life cycle assessment (LCA) that compares the environmental performances of the 12 main available European end‐of‐life (EOL) technologies in ELT processing while restricting the boundaries to the EOL stage. The second analysis has a broader scope, addressing the optimization of the ELT distribution within the 12 considered pathways to minimize the environmental impacts of the total tire use in Europe under present capacity and constraints. The results of the traditional LCA show that, except for landfill, all the tested EOL routes present environmental benefits. Material recovery pathways bring the most environmental credits, whereas civil engineering pathways are the least promising. The LCA results that emerged from the optimization of ELT management technologies yield two optimal technological mixes that maximize the quantity of ELT recycled in molded objects production: such results represent a hypothetical case with no constraints. When considering constraints, that is, limitations on maximum quantities of ELT that can undergo retreading, pyrolysis, or recycling in synthetic turfs, in molded objects and in production, the number of optimal technology mixes increases to five. The type of technologies favored depends on the minimized impact categories (climate change, fossil and nuclear energy use, human health, and ecosystem quality). A comparison between constrained and unconstrained scenarios shows that achieving the best environmental performances is conditional to the accessibility of the EOL technologies as well as their individual environmental impacts.

Evaluating the Environmental Sustainability of Alternative Ways to Produce Benzene, Toluene, and Xylene.

The petrochemical industry can reduce its environmental impacts by moving from fossil resources to alternative carbon feedstocks. Biomass and plastic waste-based production pathways have recently been developed for benzene, toluene, and xylene (BTX). This study evaluates the environmental impacts of these novel BTX pathways at a commercial and future (2050) scale, combining traditional life cycle assessment with absolute environmental sustainability assessment using the planetary boundary concept. We show that plastic waste-based BTX has lower environmental impacts than fossil BTX, including a 12% decrease in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Biomass-based BTX shows greater GHG emission reductions (42%), but it causes increased freshwater consumption and eutrophication. Toward 2050, GHG emission reductions become 75 and 107% for plastic waste and biobased production, respectively, compared to current fossil-BTX production. When comparing alternative uses of plastic waste, BTX production has larger climate benefits than waste incineration with energy recovery with a GHG benefit of 1.1 kg CO2-equiv/kg plastic waste. For biomass (glycerol)-based BTX production, other uses of glycerol are favorable over BTX production. While alternative BTX production pathways can decrease environmental impacts, they still transgress multiple planetary boundaries. Further impact reduction efforts are thus required, such as using other types of (waste) biomass, increasing carbon recycling, and abatement of end-of-life emissions.

Temporal considerations in life cycle assessments of wooden buildings: Implications for design incentives

The building and construction sector plays a vital role in mitigating climate change. Consequently, the use of wood and bio-based materials as a strategy for reducing the environmental impact of buildings is increasing. However, along with realising the potential environmental benefits of biomass, the focus on assessment methods and their inherent uncertainties increases. Typically, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is used for quantifying the environmental performance of buildings but is often criticised for not considering temporal factors related to emissions. Therefore, dynamic LCA approaches have been developed. To understand how dynamic LCA influences building design incentives, this study compares traditional LCA and dynamic LCA results on 45 cases of wooden buildings. The study finds that the overall ranking of the buildings’ environmental performance is stable, irrespective of the method used. However, the dynamic biogenic carbon accounting methods significantly influence the results and shift burdens between upfront and future emissions. Therefore, methods for time-distributed biogenic carbon accounting crucially need addressing in LCAs of wood and bio-based products.

Evaluating source separation wastewater systems using traditional life cycle assessment and the planetary boundaries approach

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a commonly used method for assessing environmental impacts of systems, but cannot produce absolute values, i.e. a comparison with existing calculated values, which represents limits of what can be emitted into the environment. Therefore, absolute environmental sustainability assessments have been developed to assess impacts against the planetary boundaries (PBs) of the safe operating space for humanity. Since PB-LCAs are novel, it is useful to analyze both results from this method and conventional LCAs, something which has not been done before. This study applied both methods to two full-scale sanitation systems in the city of Helsingborg, Sweden. The current conventional system for handling wastewater with active sludge and food waste to biogas production was compared with the novel project H+ source separation system with three pipes (food waste, grey and black water) with increased resource recovery through anaerobic digestion, ammonia stripping, struvite precipitation and pelletization. The Planetary Boundaries LCA (PB-LCA) results showed that both systems exceeded eight of the assigned shares of PBs, including climate change and biogeochemical flows of nutrients. Traditional LCA (ReCiPe impact assessment) showed net savings for the H+ system in a few categories and considerable reductions in several impacts, e.g., global warming potential (GWP), stratospheric ozone depletion, terrestrial acidification, and water consumption. In PB-LCA the H+ system gave additional impacts in both assessments for a few categories, mostly due to high consumption of chemicals in the ammonium stripping process used for nutrient recovery. In conclusion, the combined assessments highlight hot-spots for process optimization in the H+ system. From a methodological standpoint, PB-LCA still needs improvements to better reflect avoided burdens and results from traditional LCA should be fully transparent and analyzed carefully. The assessment methods complement each other and can be combined to better represent environmental performances of systems.

Electrospun nanofibrous membranes for membrane distillation application-A dynamic life cycle assessment (dLCA) approach.

Membrane distillation (MD) for water desalination and purification has been gaining prominence to address the issues relating to water security and the destruction of aquatic ecosystems globally. Recent advances in electrospun membranes for MD application have improved antifouling and anti-wetting performance. However, the environmental impacts associated with producing novel electrospun membranes still need to be clarified. It is imperative to quantify and analyze the tradeoffs between membrane performance and impacts at the early stages of research on these novel membranes. Life Cycle Assessment(LCA) is an appropriate tool to systematically account for environmental performance, all the way from raw material extraction to the disposal of any product, process, or technology. The inherent lack of detailed datasets for emerging technologies contributes to significant uncertainties, making the adoption of traditional LCA challenging. A dynamic LCA (dLCA) is performed to guide the sustainable design and selection of emerging electrospun poly (vinylidene fluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene) (PVDF-HFP) electrospun membrane (E-PH) and hybridizing polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) on E-PH membrane (E-PDMS) for dyeing wastewater treatment technologies. The associated environmental impacts are related to the high energy demands required for fabricating electrospun nanofibrous membranes. After LCA analysis, the E-PDMS membrane emerges as a promising membrane, due to the relatively low impact/benefit ratio and the high performance achieved in treating dyeing wastewater.

The Role of Renewable-Derived Plastics in the Analysis of Waste Management Schemes: A Time-Dependent Carbon Cycle Assessment

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is an essential greenhouse gas removal (GGR) technology used to achieve negative emissions in bioenergy plants using biomass feedstock (Bio-CCS). In this study, the climate mitigation potential of a novel GGR technology consisting in the production of renewable-derived plastics from municipal solid waste (MSW) refuse has been evaluated. This novel GGR technology allows for carbon storage, for variable periods, in stable materials (plastics), and thus overcomes the technical limitations of CCS. A time-dependent carbon cycle assessment has been conducted based on the Absolute Global surface Temperature change Potential (AGTP) metric. This new method to assess carbon emissions is presented against a traditional life cycle assessment (LCA). The production of renewable-derived plastics proves to be an effective GGR technology for both landfill- and incineration-dominant countries in Europe. The results obtained encourage the implementation of renewable-derived plastics in Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) to assess their global potential in forecasting scenarios to achieve the ambitious climate change targets set in the European Union. Thanks to this study, a novel approach toward a green and sustainable economy has been established. This study will help to fill the gaps between bioenergy and renewable materials production.

Integration of ecosystem services and life cycle assessment allows improved accounting of sustainability benefits of nature-based solutions for brownfield redevelopment

Nature-based solutions (NbS) are increasingly recognized as a sustainable alternative to conventional remediation for brownfield redevelopment. One of the key advantages of NbS is that they provide ecosystem services (ES) during and after remediation. However, traditional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) does not fully account for the advantages of ES. To address this limitation, we propose a holistic sustainability assessment framework that integrates ES valuation and LCA for brownfield redevelopment planning. The framework is designed to support decision-making by providing a comprehensive environmental analysis of the impacts of different remediation scenarios. The proposed framework is applied to the London Olympic Park mega remediation project as a case study. Three considered scenarios are a business-as-usual scenario, a conventional remediation scenario, and an NbS scenario. The primary and secondary impacts of each scenario, the temporal efficacy of remediation, and the impact on ES are evaluated using the framework. The results suggest that the NbS scenario provides the best trade-off between mitigating contamination risks and economic costs within a reasonable timeframe due to the added benefits of ecosystem services. Overall, the proposed framework provides a comprehensive approach that considers the multiple aspects of environmental sustainability.

A new method of patent analysis to support prospective life cycle assessment of eco-design solutions

Prospective life cycle assessment (LCA) was introduced with the goal to evaluate the environmental sustainability of eco-design solutions (i.e., ideas, prototypes, immature products, emerging technologies) prospectively rather than existing products, at the present time, as in traditional LCA. The main difference lies in the inventory, which is foreground and is based solely on the extraction of data from prospective documents, including patents, although this task, is tricky and can make the final result uncertain. This study proposes a systematic method to collect all the flows about a specific function of the product lifecycle from patent literature for building the foreground inventory of prospective LCA, ensuring comparability, data quality and scale-up. This was done by studying the intersections between patent analysis techniques and LCA requirements for reducing the uncertainty, prescribed by ISO 14040, ISO 14044, Pedigree Matrix and Data Quality Indicators for Life Cycle Inventory Data. The application of the proposed method to a case study related to the production of titanium powders using an innovative process revealed its main advantages in collecting patents and extracting data. Patent search recall and precision are increased. Patents are filtered by seeking a trade-off to ensure time consistency and avoid anomalous fluctuations in the data resulting from predatory patenting strategies. Data reliability and significance are controlled. Results can be expressed without levelling them around the average value, but adding time evolution and forecasting considerations. For example, the global warming potential (GWP) of the innovative process is 1.5 % lower than the GWP of the current process, considering the average patent data of the last 10 years. In addition, this value showed a 1 % increase for each year.

Materials and Actor Network Theory, a way to flesh out Life Cycle Assessment?

LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) is an established method to measure the economic, social and environmental impact of a good or a service, with particular attention to its value chain or its life cycle. However, it is heavily biased in favor of environmental issues, actually environmental burdens or stressors: the economic dimension is only tackled in LCC (Life Cycle Costing) and the social in a restricted approach called SLCA (Social Life Cycle Assessment). The idea of developing a more ambitious and wider encompassing method has been elusive, except when MFA (Material Flow Analysis) was proposed as an alternative and a competing discipline, but, eventually, the two methods proposed separate but complementary views of the world. In order to reach beyond LCA and its present weaknesses, it would be necessary to base the new approach on concepts embedded in SSH (Social Sciences and Humanities) rather than in STEM (Science Technology Engineering Mathematics) disciplines. This article describes the process under way to move in that direction. In a first step, a panorama will be drawn of the strengths and weaknesses of LCA and of LCT (Life Cycle Thinking). The analysis will focus on LCA weaknesses. On the way to extending LCA into SSH territory, an approach developed by Knowledge and Innovation, Italy, and called SCM (Social Cycle of Materials) looks at materials from a historical perspective. It shows how various resolutions (closures) are proposed to answer issues raised at different times, as a result of society’s demand. The method proposes a distinctly new way of looking at materials cycles. The connection between this new approach and the traditional LCA cycle remains, however, to be done. In this paper, we propose to use ANT (Actor Network Theory), a concept developed by Bruno Latour, Michel Callon and Madeleine Akrich, to propose reconstructing the concept of LCA. The approach ambitions to list the various “stakeholders” related to materials in their value chain, like what is done in LCA, but also across long time, like what is done in SCM, and to include all actors in the sense of ANT, which means inanimate objects as well as elements of the geosphere and of the biosphere. It is expected to gain some insight into moving away from the indicator-based style of LCA. Clearly, we are still exploring and, most probably, we may end up complementing traditional LCA, most certainly not replacing it.

Applying life cycle assessment with minimal information to support early-stage material selection

Traditional life cycle assessment (LCA) is too data intensive and time consuming to be used during typical building design processes. Conducting an LCA during the building design process therefore requires simplifications and assumptions. Such “screening LCAs” are quicker and can be used with less data but introduce greater uncertainty. Unfortunately, uncertainty is not reflected in standard deterministic LCA calculations, which produce single-point values in LCA results. Thus, in this study, data quality scoring has been incorporated into a screening LCA to produce probabilistic predictions of environmental performance based on limited data. The approach has been applied during the design process of a bio-based wall panel designed for a circular economy. A combination of ecoinvent and material data sheets were used to analyse a wide range of novel bio-based insulation materials. The screening LCA analysed global warming potential and identified a short-list of promising materials that were then subjected to a detailed LCA for further consideration in the design. The method uses publicly available information and can be applied at material or building-element level. The method thus helps designers estimate environmental impacts without hindering the design process.

Analyzing the Potential Environmental and Socio-Economic Impacts of Regional Energy Integration Scenarios of a Bio-Based Industrial Network

The goal of this work was to evaluate the socio-economic and environmental life cycle advantages of alternative defossilization pathways for a bio-based industrial network in Central Germany. Five scenarios were defined considering the potential energy utilization of further regionally available biomass capacities. The evaluation was made using an integrated approach, i.e., using a traditional life cycle assessment methodology, complemented by a regionalized socio-economic life cycle assessment framework. The results show that the environmental advantages from the change in energy provisioning reduced about 5% of the total environmental impacts. The analysis of the socio-economic impacts shows that the path to defossilization of the integrated network provides a clear enhancement of the expected regional socio-economic impacts. These results show that 100% decoupling from natural gas brings overall positive sustainability advantages to all organizations participating in the evaluated value chains. The methodological approach presented in this work can allow the identification of hotspots and opportunities within the regions where the implementation of technological alternatives takes place.

BIM-integrated LCA to automate embodied carbon assessment of prefabricated buildings

Building information modeling (BIM) has been leveraged to reduce manual efforts in the life cycle assessment (LCA) of buildings. However, data interoperability between BIM and LCA tools remains a significant challenge because of disparate data structures, leading to a deficiency in automatic data mapping methods. Few studies have adopted professional BIM and LCA tools to evaluate the embodied carbon of prefabricated buildings at multiple spatial levels. Thus, this paper developed a BIM-integrated LCA solution to automate the embodied carbon assessment of prefabricated buildings based on a five-level framework: material, component, assembly, flat, and building. The solution framework involved three modules: (1) BIM data preparation, (2) data extraction and integration, and (3) embodied carbon assessment. An Industry Foundation Classes (IFC)-enabled data transfer tool was developed to adapt BIM data to the LCA data structure automatically. A real-life prefabricated building in Hong Kong was used to validate the feasibility of the developed solution by comparing it with the traditional LCA method. Embodied carbon was reported in five levels. The cradle-to-end-of-construction embodied carbon of the case building was calculated as 561 kg CO2/m2, showing an acceptable 1% discrepancy with traditional LCA results owing to inevitable quantity differences between design and construction. The results also indicate a dramatical time reduction in the LCA modeling process from 729 min to 62 min, achieving a 91.5% efficiency improvement. It can thus practically increase practitioners’ willingness to conduct LCA at an early design stage with quick feedback. The developed solution also extends the knowledge on automatic BIM-integrated LCA methodologically by addressing data interoperability using the IFC standard. Further, it provides systematic insights into the embodied carbon emissions of prefabricated buildings based on the five-level theoretical framework, guiding low-carbon designs for prefabricated buildings.

Environmental trade-offs for using low-noise pavements: Life cycle assessment with noise considerations

Noise mitigation is the main advantage of semi-dense asphalt (SDA) pavements compared to traditional pavements such as stone-mastic asphalt (SMA), but noise is not quantitatively considered in traditional life cycle assessment (LCA). This article performs a comprehensive LCA for SMA and SDA including noise considerations. State-of-the-art sound emission and acoustical ageing models were used to determine the road traffic noise. The latest Swiss dose-response curves and current noise exposure data were used to evaluate health impacts due to noise. Additionally, traditional LCA is also included for assessing the greenhouse gas emissions, non-renewable cumulative energy demand and health impacts of non-noise processes. The results show that SDA causes around 70 % higher greenhouse gases and energy demand than SMA, primarily due to its shorter service life. However, the noise impacts in disability adjusted life years (DALYs) are higher by two to three orders of magnitude than non-noise processes, and the use of SDA can reduce 40 % of the total DALYs. It is shown that road traffic noise plays a significant role in the LCA of pavements. The trade-off between greenhouse gas and energy related impacts, on the one hand, and health effects, on the other hand, requires critical consideration by decision makers when promoting low-noise pavements.

Evaluating the cascading‐use of wood furniture: How value‐retention processes can contribute to material efficiency and circularity

AbstractAs utilized technical products, durable wood furniture plays an important role in a future circular economy (CE). However, contemporary CE literature predominantly focuses on wood's biochemical properties and its potential as a consumable material within the bio‐cycle. This perspective prevents meaningful consideration of CE strategies for the wood products sector, particularly for value‐retention processes (VRPs), including reuse, repair, and refurbishment. We adapt and apply the VRP model introduced by the UN International Resource Panel (IRP) to wood furniture products to quantify select environmental benefits made possible through cascading‐use, via VRPs (vs. new manufacturing). Unlike traditional life cycle assessment (LCA), this model accounts for impacts incurred and avoided through product life‐extension and VRPs, relative to conventional systems of new manufacturing, disposal, and replacement. Three case studies of wood‐based chairs are conducted to demonstrate this new application of the VRP model to compare the relative environmental impacts associated with wood furniture that is diverted to cascading‐use, prior to recycling. In collaboration with industry partners, new material requirements (kg/unit), energy requirements (kWh/unit), emissions (kg CO2‐e./unit), and waste generation (kg/unit) were calculated for newly manufactured chairs (OEM new) and subsequent cascading‐use via reuse, repair, and refurbishment. The differing degrees of environmental impact avoidance and material efficiency are presented for each case study product and VRP, to provoke discussion and future research regarding the effective and optimal utilization of technical, durable wooden furniture within a CE.

An infinite life cycle assessment model to re-evaluate resource efficiency and environmental impacts of circular economy systems

Challenges exist in life cycle assessment (LCA) to evaluate resource efficiency and environmental impacts of circular economy systems. Rules attributing recycling benefits/burdens are inconsistent, causing system boundary ambiguity. Besides, LCAs covering one or several life cycles fail to capture the complete resource path, which leads to unfair assessment results for the primary life cycle. This paper develops an infinite life cycle assessment model, which integrates LCA, substance flow analysis, and a state transition matrix into an infinite-life-cycle framework. On this basis, algorithms are formulated to quantify the resource efficiency and attribute environmental impacts following the principle of whole first, then allocation. Our model is demonstrated by a case study of lead-acid batteries. Results show that the resource efficiency of lead in the infinite life cycle assessment model is at least 118.75% higher than that of primary lead derived from the typical finite life cycle models. Measured by the index of environmental toxicity potential, environmental impacts are transferred from the primary product life cycle to recycled product life cycles, with the range fluctuating from 66.26% to 68.12%. Our model enables scholars to make more reasonable assessments for circular economy systems based on traditional LCA adjustment. From the infinite-life-cycle perspective, sustainable production policies should focus on increasing the recycling rate of waste products rather than limiting the exploitation of natural resources.

Temporal Hotspot Identification using Dynamic Life Cycle Inventory: Which are the Critical Time-spans within the Product Life Cycle?

Dynamic Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) accounts for the temporal variation of the LCA model. Due to the relative lack of temporally-differentiated characterization factors for the Life Cycle Impact Assessment stage, the most common way to perform dynamic LCA is to limit the dynamic component to the Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) stage. In the manufacturing context, this would translate into a shop-floor connected through Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, to continuously track inventory variables such as technological and environmental flows as well as throughput rate. LCA impacts could then be assessed for each time-step, following their temporal distribution, which would have been overseen with a traditional static LCA. Hotspot analysis can be used to analyze the most relevant drivers of LCA impacts. It can be repeated for each impact category, is embedded in commercial LCA software and, can be done at life cycle stage, process, technological and elementary flow levels. We define temporal hotspots as critical time-spans, responsible for a significant share of LCA impacts. Here we show how to identify temporal hotspots in the context of a dynamic LCI. This would allow for the assessment and management of a new level of differentiation for the hotspot analysis, the temporal one. Moreover, traditional levels of hotspot identification (e.g. process or flow) can be used in an assessment focused on the critical time-spans. To guide readers through the implementation of the methodology, we test it on a hypothetical case study. The methodology could inform decision makers looking for detailed data-driven solutions to reduce LCA impacts of those life cycle stages for which dynamic LCI data is available. Since dynamic LCI data rarely covers the full life cycle, a hotspot analysis with static data is still needed, as a preliminary assessment.

The Sustainability Data Science Life Cycle for automating multi-purpose LCA workflows for the analysis of large product portfolios

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a powerful and sophisticated tool to gain deep understanding of the environmental hotspots and optimization potentials of products. Yet, its cost-intensive manual data engineering and analysis workflows restrain its wider application in eco-design, green procurement, supply chain management, sustainable investment or other relevant business processes. Especially for large product portfolios and increasing reporting requirements, traditional LCA workflows and tools often fail to provide the necessary scalability. The Sustainability Data Science Life Cycle (S-DSLC) is a concept for workflow automation for multi-purpose LCA of large product portfolios. The concept integrates the frameworks of LCA, the cross-industry standard process for data mining (CRISP-DM), and the Data Science Life Cycle (DSLC). Key aspects of the concept are deep business-, stakeholder and user-understanding, deployment of LCA results in interactive browser tools (i.e. LCA-dashboards and Guided Analytics) tailored to the needs of individual roles and business processes, as well as the automation of data preparation, model generation and Life Cycle Impact Assessment based on modern data analytic tools. The demonstration of the concept shows substantial scalability improvements for dealing with large product portfolios and broad application of LCA results in various business processes.

Environmental assessments of scales: The effect of ex-ante and ex-post data on life cycle assessment of wood torrefaction

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a powerful tool for achieving sustainability. Traditional LCAs analyze well defined and developed industrial systems, but recent developments of LCA focus on analyzing emerging technologies which are not yet optimized with respect to energy and materials. Therefore, LCA results of ex-ante applications can be very different from ex-post applications for the same system. The purpose of this study is to show the different effects of data scales on LCA results regarding global warming, fine particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification and freshwater eutrophication potentials. For this purpose torrefaction technology was selected as the case study and assessed based on bench scale data, lab scale data, data derived from process simulations, pilot scale data and commercial scale data. Considered environmental impacts were global warming, fine particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification and freshwater eutrophication. Results showed that process efficiencies improved significantly between the bench scale system and systems with higher technology readiness levels (TRLs), such as pilot, process simulations and commercial scale systems. Furthermore, process simulations result in scores closer to commercial scale regarding all considered environmental impacts. However, if LCA practitioners focus only on global warming impact, then pilot scale is also a good alternative. Finally, due to torrefaction technology being relatively simple in terms of raw materials input, we suggest more complex chemical systems to be assessed with LCA in various TRLs.

Reconciling regionally-explicit nutritional needs with environmental protection by means of nutritional life cycle assessment

Nutritional life cycle assessment integrates nutrition into environmental life cycle analysis to comprehensively account for agri-food sustainability challenges including micronutrient deficiencies, nutrient diversity, and environmental impacts like climate change or freshwater scarcity, when compared to traditional life cycle assessment. We use regionally-explicit nutritional and environmental data at the food product and country levels to calculate environmental impacts, nutritional adequacy (e.g., Nutrient Rich Food Indices), and nutritional diversity (e.g., Rao's Quadratic Entropy). We first discuss various reasons for the differences in nutritional and environmental sustainability metrics for the various food products and countries. We then present nutritionally-invested environmental impacts. Here, because nutritional life cycle analysis is a nascent method, we explore the influence of methodological choice (e.g., capped versus uncapped metrics, energy standardization, contingent versus non-contingent measures) on results. We find using nutritionally-invested environmental impacts change the relative sustainability rankings of foods and countries, regional variability in nutritional profiles and environmental footprints of food products influence results, methodological choice alters nutritional metric scores, and food products can cover nutritional deficiencies in an environmentally-friendly manner. Our study contributes to research on the joint accounting of nutritional and environmental food system outcomes.