Stormwater management is essential to reducing the occurrence of flooding events in urban areas and to adapting to climate change. The construction of stormwater Best Management Practices (BMPs) entails a series of life cycle environmental impacts but also implies avoided burdens, such as replacing urban infrastructure after flooding. The aim of this paper is to integrate flood damage prevention into the life cycle assessment (LCA) of BMPs for quantifying their net environmental impact (NEI) and environmental payback (EP) from a consequential LCA standpoint. As a case study, the application of a filter, swale and infiltration trench (FST) in a Brazilian neighborhood was assessed considering a high-intensity rainfall event. The potential avoided impacts were related to cars and sidewalks that were not destroyed due to flooding. In terms of CO2eq. emissions, the environmental investment related to the FST was recovered when the destruction of one car or 84 m 2 of sidewalk was prevented. The NEI of the FSTs resulted in significant impact reductions (up to 700%) with respect to not accounting for the avoided products. This approach can be implemented to any type of BMP, and more accurate estimations can be made with data for different events and different types of material damage.

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Abstract:Green and grey stormwater management infrastructures, such as the filter, swale and infiltration trench (FST), can be used to prevent flooding events. The aim of this paper was to determine the environmental and economic impacts of a pilot FST that was built in São Carlos (Brazil) using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC). As a result, the components with the greatest contributions to the total impacts of the FST were the infiltration trench and the grass cover. The system has a carbon footprint of 0.13 kg CO 2 eq./m 3 of infiltrated stormwater and an eco-efficiency ratio of 0.35 kg CO 2 eq./USD. Moreover, the FST prevented up to 95% of the runoff in the area.Compared to a grey infrastructure, this system is a good solution with respect to PVC stormwater pipes, which require a long pipe length (1070 m) and have a shorter lifespan. In contrast, concrete pipes are a better solution, and their impacts are similar to those of the FST. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to assess the changes in the impacts with the varying lifespan of the system components. Thus, the proper management of the FST can reduce the economic and environmental impacts of the system by increasing its durability.

The role of life cycle assessment (LCA) in informing the development of a sustainable and circular bioeconomy is discussed. We analyse the critical challenges remaining in using LCA and propose improvements needed to resolve future development challenges. Biobased systems are often complex combinations of technologies and practices that are geographically dispersed over long distances and with heterogeneous and uncertain sets of indicators and impacts. Recent studies have provided methodological suggestions on how LCA can be improved for evaluating the sustainability of biobased systems with a new focus on emerging systems, helping to identify environmental and social opportunities prior to large R&D investments. However, accessing economies of scale and improved conversion efficiencies while maintaining compatibility across broad ranges of sustainability indicators and public acceptability remain key challenges for the bioeconomy. LCA can inform, but not by itself resolve this complex dimension of sustainability. Future policy interventions that aim to promote the bioeconomy and support strategic value chains will benefit from the systematic use of LCA. However, the LCA community needs to develop the mechanisms and tools needed to generate agreement and coordinate the standards and incentives that will underpin a successful biobased transition. Systematic stakeholder engagement and the use of multidisciplinary analysis in combination with LCA are essential components of emergent LCA methods. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Bio-derived and bioinspired sustainable advanced materials for emerging technologies (part 1)’.

The use of land resources has a strong influence on the sustainability of biofuel production. An assessment of both direct and indirect changes in land use is necessary if an accurate assessment of sustainability is to be made. An increasing number of studies have developed approaches to estimate the Indirect Land Use Change (ILUC) impacts of biofuels at global, national or regional level, but assessing ILUC remains a challenging task and estimates vary widely. In this study, we suggest that a socially motivated, project level approach can provide robust insight into the conditions affecting land use change dynamics. We developed a causal‐descriptive approach named ILUC Project ASsessment Tool (ILUC PAST) for project level assessment of ILUC. It uses a tiered multitool analysis—from local to global—combined with extensive stakeholder engagement. A real‐world project for the production of cellulosic ethanol in Sardinia (Italy) was used to evaluate the tool and benchmark the results against two alternatives for project level assessment: the ‘Low Indirect Impact Biofuel’ methodology and the ‘iLUC Club’ method. The results of the case study of advanced biofuels suggest that the quantitative estimates of ILUC combined with the in‐depth understanding of the cause‐and‐effect dynamics provided by ILUC PAST are sufficiently credible, salient and legitimate to support project level and local decision‐making.

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