Assessing Environmental Impacts in a Life-Cycle Perspective

Hauschild, Michael Zwicky

doi:10.1021/es053190s

Cited by 149 publications

(107 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…In our view, given the material intensive nature of wind power compared to fossil alternatives [69], and that toxic releases to the environment are known to originate from materials manufacturing [21,22,35], the most serious gap in knowledge is the insufficient understanding of toxic emissions generated in the life cycle of wind power systems. From the viewpoint of the LCA practitioner, assessing toxic effects may be difficult because: i) emissions data on toxic substances is missing or is incomplete, and ii) current impact assessment methods for toxicity produce contradictory results and hence lack robustness [13,70]. The neglect or incomplete modeling of toxicity is not a problem specific to wind power LCAs, however, but applies to the LCA literature in general [13].…”

Section: Impact Category Coveragementioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the life cycle environmental impacts of wind power: A review of present knowledge and research needs

Arvesen

Hertwich

2012

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

172

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We critically review present knowledge of the life cycle environmental impacts of wind power.We find that the current body of life cycle assessments (LCA) of wind power provides a fairly good overall understanding of fossil energy use and associated pollution; our survey of results that appear in existing literature give mean values (± standard deviation) of, e.g., 0.060 (±0.058) kWh energy used and 19 (±13) g CO 2 e emitted per kWh electricity, suggesting good environmental performance vis-à-vis fossil-based power. Total emissions of onshore and offshore wind farms are comparable. The bulk of emissions generally occur in the production of components; onshore, the wind turbine dominates, while offshore, the substructure becomes relatively more important. Strong positive effects of scale are present in the lower end of the turbine size spectrum, but there is no clear evidence for such effects for MW-sized units. We identify weaknesses and gaps in knowledge that future research may address. This includes poorly understood impacts in categories of toxicity and resource depletion, lack of empirical basis for assumptions about replacement of parts, and apparent lack of detailed considerations of offshore operations for wind farms in ocean waters. We argue that applications of the avoided burden method to model recycling benefits generally lack transparency and may be inconsistent.Assumed capacity factor values are generally higher than current mean realized values. Finally, we discuss the need for LCA research to move beyond unit-based assessments in order to address temporal aspects and the scale of impacts.

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Section: Impact Category Coveragementioning

confidence: 99%

Assessing the life cycle environmental impacts of wind power: A review of present knowledge and research needs

Arvesen

Hertwich

2012

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

172

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“…Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is an environmental analysis tool used to systematically evaluate the potential environmental impacts that arise from the consumption of resources or emission of substances to the environment throughout the entire life cycle of a product or service (Hauschild, 2005). In the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) phase the inventoried emissions are multiplied by substance-specific characterisation factors (CF) that represent the ability of those to impact on representative indicators.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Exposure factors for marine eutrophication impacts assessment based on a mechanistic biological model

Cosme

Koski

Hauschild

2015

Ecological Modelling

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Document Version Peer reviewed version Link back to DTU Orbit Citation (APA):Cosme, N. M. D., Koski, M., & Hauschild, M. Z. (2015). Exposure factors for marine eutrophication impacts assessment based on a mechanistic biological model. Ecological Modelling, 317, 50-63. DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolmodel.2015.09.005 Cosme et al. / Ecological Modelling 317 (2015 AbstractEmissions of nitrogen (N) from anthropogenic sources enrich marine waters and promote planktonic growth. This newly synthesised organic carbon is eventually exported to benthic waters where aerobic respiration by heterotrophic bacteria results in the consumption of dissolved oxygen (DO). This pathway is typical of marine eutrophication. A model is proposed to mechanistically estimate the response of coastal marine ecosystems to N inputs. It addresses the biological processes of nutrient-limited primary production (PP), metazoan consumption, and bacterial degradation, in four distinct sinking routes from primary (cell aggregates) and secondary producers (faecal pellets, carcasses, and active vertical transport). Carbon export production (P E ) and ecosystems eXposure Factors (XF), which represents a nitrogen-to-oxygen 'conversion' potential, were estimated at a spatial resolution of 66 large marine ecosystem (LME), five climate zones, and site-generic. The XFs obtained range from 0.45 (Central Arctic Ocean) to 15.9 kgO 2 ·kgN -1 (Baltic Sea). While LME resolution is recommended, aggregated P E or XF per climate zone can be adopted, but not global aggregation due to high variability. The XF is essential to estimate a marine eutrophication impacts indicator in Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) of anthropogenic-N emissions. Every relevant process was modelled and the uncertainty of the driving parameters considered low suggesting valid applicability in characterisation modelling in LCIA.

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“…This means that LCIA addresses not only the toxic impacts (as ERA does) but also the other impacts associated with emissions of air pollutants (global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, acidification, photochemical ozone and smog formation) or waterborne discharges (eutrophication and oxygen depletion), as well as the environmental impacts from different forms of land use, from noise and from radiation, and the use and loss of renewable and non-renewable resources. In order to avoid an unwanted bias in its treatment of the different environmental impacts, LCIA aims for best estimates in the applied modelling in contrast to the conservative approach, which is often taken in the early tiers of ERA (Hauschild, 2005).…”

Section: State Of the Art Assessment Of Metals In Lciamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The use in LCIA poses some specific restrictions on the model (see Hauschild, 2005), including the necessity to operate with limited data on substances and environmental conditions. This being said, many of the findings are, however, also valid for fate modelling of metals in ERA.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%