Estimates of Embodied Global Energy and Air-Emission Intensities of Japanese Products for Building a Japanese Input–Output Life Cycle Assessment Database with a Global System Boundary

Abstract

To build a life cycle assessment (LCA) database of Japanese products embracing their global supply chains in a manner requiring lower time and labor burdens, this study estimates the intensity of embodied global environmental burden for commodities produced in Japan. The intensity of embodied global environmental burden is a measure of the environmental burden generated globally by unit production of the commodity and can be used as life cycle inventory data in LCA. The calculation employs an input–output LCA method with a global link input–output model that defines a global system boundary grounded in a simplified multiregional input–output framework. As results, the intensities of embodied global environmental burden for 406 Japanese commodities are determined in terms of energy consumption, greenhouse-gas emissions (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, perfluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, sulfur hexafluoride, and their summation), and air-pollutant emissions (nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide). The uncertainties in the intensities of embodied global environmental burden attributable to the simplified structure of the global link input–output model are quantified using Monte Carlo simulation. In addition, by analyzing the structure of the embodied global greenhouse-gas intensities we characterize Japanese commodities in the context of LCA embracing global supply chains.

Optimization Model for Mitigating Global Warming at the Farm Scale: An Application to Japanese Rice Farms

“…Variation in the N2O emissions resulting from prolonged midseason drainage was not taken into account because N2O emissions from rice paddy fields, in terms of GWP-based CO2 equivalent, were much smaller than CH4 emissions [10]. Off-farm emissions of CO2, CH4, and N2O were calculated using the cost data and the embodied global environmental burden coefficients based on the purchaser price of household consumption expenditure or producer price in 2005 [34]. Table 5.…”

“…Variation in the N 2 O emissions resulting from prolonged midseason drainage was not taken into account because N 2 O emissions from rice paddy fields, in terms of GWP-based CO 2 equivalent, were much smaller than CH 4 emissions [10]. Off-farm emissions of CO 2 , CH 4 , and N 2 O were calculated using the cost data and the embodied global environmental burden coefficients based on the purchaser price of household consumption expenditure or producer price in 2005 [34]. 1 The amounts of fossil fuels were calculated based on each cultivation protocol [21,25]; 2 The production costs, apart from those of fertilizer and pesticide in conventional rice production (average in 2010-2012 [29]), were calculated based on each cultivation protocol [21,25].…”

“…The CO 2 equivalence factors for GWP were CO 2 1, CH 4 21, and N 2 O 310 on a 100-year time horizon [38], which were equal to those used in studies by Nansai et al [34] and the Greenhouse Gas Inventory Office of Japan [7].…”

“…Because the indirect GHG emission coefficients from Nansai et al [34] were converted in terms of CO 2 equivalence using the characterization factors in the Greenhouse Gas Inventory Office of Japan [7,55], 1 of CO 2 , 21 of CH 4 , and 310 of N 2 O on a 100-year time horizon were selected for GWP assessment in this paper. In the sensitivity analysis, the GWP results that were recalculated using the new CO 2 equivalence factors, CO 2 1, CH 4 28, and N 2 O 265 on a 100-year time horizon [6], were compared with those shown in Table 7.…”

A Practical Approach to Screening Potential Environmental Hotspots of Different Impact Categories in Supply Chains

“…In recent years, various multi-region input-output (MRIO) models have provided embodied intensities of GHGs and other substances that take into account the import and export [12][13][14][15][16]. A similar approach can be applied to various other types of environmental burden or resource consumption measures including the ecological footprint (EF) and WF [17].…”