Global guidance on environmental life cycle impact assessment indicators: impacts of climate change, fine particulate matter formation, water consumption and land use

Jolliet, Olivier; Antón, Assumpció; Boulay, Anne‐Marie; Cherubini, Francesco; Fantke, Peter; Levasseur, Annie; McKone, Thomas E.; Michelsen, Ottar; Canals, Llorenç Milà i; Motoshita, Masaharu; Pfister, Stephan; Verones, Francesca; Vigon, Bruce; Frischknecht, Rolf

doi:10.1007/s11367-018-1443-y

Cited by 115 publications

(90 citation statements)

References 53 publications

(47 reference statements)

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“…Jolliet et al () recommended that users apply two climate change impact assessment methods that focus on different types of climate response and different time horizons, to assess two complementary dimensions of climate change: short‐term impacts, notably relevant for the rate at which climate is changing (using GWP 100 ) and long‐term impacts targeting temperature stabilization (using GTP 100 ) (Levasseur, ; Levasseur et al, ). This recommendation to use multiple methods that reflect either short‐term or long‐term impacts could be a useful starting point for enhancing comparability of future climate impact assessment studies of bioenergy systems.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In recent years, however, some progress has been made towards agreed methodology and consistent assessment of climate change impacts, with the work carried out by the IPCC (Plattner et al, 2009), the European Commission (2010) and the UNEP/SETAC Life Cycle Initiative (Frischknecht & Jolliet, 2016;Levasseur et al, 2016) and reviews of proposed approaches (Breton et al, 2018;Helin et al, 2013;Røyne et al, 2016). Jolliet et al (2018) recommended that users apply two climate change impact assessment methods that focus on different types of climate response and different time horizons, to assess two complementary dimensions of climate change: short-term impacts, notably relevant for the rate at which climate is changing (using GWP 100 ) and long-term impacts targeting temperature stabilization (using GTP 100 ) (Levasseur, 2017;Levasseur et al, 2016). This recommendation to use multiple methods that reflect either short-term or long-term impacts could be a useful starting point for enhancing comparability of future climate impact assessment studies of bioenergy systems.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Quantifying the climate change effects of bioenergy systems: Comparison of 15 impact assessment methods

et al. 2019

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Ongoing concern over climate change has led to interest in replacing fossil energy with bioenergy. There are different approaches to quantitatively estimate the climate change effects of bioenergy systems. In the present work, we have focused on a range of published impact assessment methods that vary due to conceptual differences in the treatment of biogenic carbon fluxes, the type of climate change impacts they address and differences in time horizon and time preference. Specifically, this paper reviews fifteen different methods and applies these to three hypothetical bioenergy case studies: (a) woody biomass grown on previously forested land; (b) woody biomass grown on previous pasture land; and (b) annual energy crop grown on previously cropped land. Our analysis shows that the choice of method can have an important influence on the quantification of climate change effects of bioenergy, particularly when a mature forest is converted to bioenergy use as it involves a substantial reduction in biomass carbon stocks. Results are more uniform in other case studies. In general, results are more sensitive to specific impact assessment methods when they involve both emissions and removals at different points in time, such as for forest bioenergy, but have a much smaller influence on agricultural bioenergy systems grown on land previously used for pasture or annual cropping. The development of effective policies for climate change mitigation through renewable energy use requires consistent and accurate approaches to identification of bioenergy systems that can result in climate change mitigation. The use of different methods for the same purpose: estimating the climate change effects of bioenergy systems, can lead to confusing and contradictory conclusions. A full interpretation of the results generated with different methods must be based on an understanding that the different methods focus on different aspects of climate change and represent different time preferences.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Quantifying the climate change effects of bioenergy systems: Comparison of 15 impact assessment methods

et al. 2019

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“…This means that LCA studies lack standardization and comparability. Although guidelines of best impact indicators have been proposed [38][39][40], current LCA practices are still limited in their inclusion of important categories such as biodiversity, land-use change and social-economic aspects in an effective and righteous way [12,38,41,42]. Other comments in the literature on the limitations of LCA include the reliance on average (not place-specific) data of representative industries [17] and treating impacts as linear [43].…”

Section: General Limitationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Methods to Assess the Impacts and Indirect Land Use Change Caused by Telecoupled Agricultural Supply Chains: A Review

Paitan

Verburg

2019

Sustainability

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The increasing international trade of agricultural products has contributed to a larger diversity of food at low prices and represents an important economic value. However, such trade can also cause social, environmental and economic impacts beyond the limits of the countries directly involved in the exchange. Agricultural systems are telecoupled because the impacts caused by trade can generate important feedback loops, spillovers, rebound effects, time lags and non-linearities across multiple geographical and temporal scales that make these impacts more difficult to identify and mitigate. We make a comparative review of current impact assessment methods to analyze their suitability to assess the impacts of telecoupled agricultural supply chains. Given the large impacts caused by agricultural production on land systems, we focus on the capacity of methods to account for and spatially allocate direct and indirect land use change. Our analysis identifies trade-offs between methods with respect to the elements of the telecoupled system they address. Hybrid methods are a promising field to navigate these trade-offs. Knowledge gaps in assessing indirect land use change should be overcome in order to improve the accuracy of assessments.

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“…Therefore, we recommend the assessment of a broad variety of relevant impact categories in future LCA studies, including toxicity impacts and land use, as well as NPPU, water dependence and overfishing related impacts, which are not common to LCA applications, albeit relevant to aquaculture systems. LCIA methods for these categories exist and should be used, including, but not limited to, the USEtox model for toxicity impacts (Bijster et al 2017), land use assessment method developed by Chaudhary et al (2015) and recommended in Jolliet et al (2018), the NPPU method described in Papatryphon et al (2004) and water dependence introduced and developed by Aubin et al (2009). .…”

Section: Covering All Environmental Impacts Of Aquaculturementioning

confidence: 99%

LCA of aquaculture systems: methodological issues and potential improvements

Bohnes

Laurent

2018

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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Global guidance on environmental life cycle impact assessment indicators: impacts of climate change, fine particulate matter formation, water consumption and land use

Abstract: Global guidance on environmental life cycle impact assessment indicators: Impacts of climate change, fine particulate matter formation, water consumption and land use

Cited by 115 publications

References 53 publications

Quantifying the climate change effects of bioenergy systems: Comparison of 15 impact assessment methods

Quantifying the climate change effects of bioenergy systems: Comparison of 15 impact assessment methods

Methods to Assess the Impacts and Indirect Land Use Change Caused by Telecoupled Agricultural Supply Chains: A Review

LCA of aquaculture systems: methodological issues and potential improvements

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