Industrial Ecology in Policy Making: What is Achievable and What is Not?

The rebound effect through industrial ecology’s eyes: a review of LCA-based studies

“…The author described the strengths and weaknesses of both approaches for LCA, concluding that softlinking could aid to reduce the issue of increasing complexity if both LCA and CGE models are integrated. Pothen (2010) also provided a number of guidelines in order to combine LCA with CGE through which he called a "Life Cycle Based Computable General Equilibrium Model". He also opted for a softlinking approach, arguing that it would avoid an increase in complexity, make interpretation and critique for every step possible and reduce cost and effort for the analyst.…”

“…The rebound effect can be caused by both efficiency (same output) and conservation decisions (less output) Topic: broadening the functional unit Goedkoop (1999) The functional unit must be determined through observed demand data rather than arbitrarily, thus allowing for the assessment of the rebound effect from consumer and market behaviour Hofstetter and Madjar (2003) Because consumers seek utility rather than product functional outputs, the functional unit should be based on utility levels in order to represent more accurately product demand and improve the assessment of the rebound effect Weidema and Thrane (2007) Instead of product functional outputs, functional units should be defined in terms of broader functions that can be fulfilled by substitutable product alternatives in order to fully account for the rebound effect Topic: broadening the consumption and production factors Hofstetter and Madjar (2003) Rather than just money, six consumption factors leading to rebound effects can be determined: money, information, resources, space, time and skills Socio-psychological costs or can be considered a consumption factor and changes in those can induce a sociopsychological rebound effect Weidema and Thrane (2007) Technology availability can be considered a consumption factor potentially leading to the rebound effect De Haan (2008) Changes in technical definitions can cause competitive advantages to technologies, causing a regulatory rebound effect Topic: methodological advances in LCA Ekvall (2002) and Pothen (2010) Structural environmental rebound effects can be calculated by linking the process tree of an LCA with a CGE model. The linkage can be in the form of connected models (softlinking) or through a unique model (hardlinking) Briceno et al (2004) The use of hybrid LCA increases the technology explicitness when modelling the indirect price environmental rebound effect.…”

“…The rebound effect presents complex challenges if absolute environmental improvements are desired rather than relative environmental improvements. The relevance of these findings is magnified by the fact that LCA results are increasingly being incorporated as a policy support information (Pothen 2010). Incorporating the rebound effect in LCA-based studies in a sound way is thus of critical importance.…”

“…While a number of LCA-based studies have considered such effects in a different way, no generally applicable guidelines have been developed so far (de Haan 2008;Girod et al 2011;Heijungs et al 2009;Pothen 2010). One of the main reasons behind such a lack of guidelines is the comprehensiveness of the LCA framework, which has permitted to broaden the rebound concept from energy economics (Girod et al 2011;Hertwich 2005;Hofstetter et al 2002;Hofstetter and Madjar 2003;Murray 2013;Takase et al 2005;Thomas and Azevedo 2013a).…”

Potential for Integrating Diffusion of Innovation Principles into Life Cycle Assessment of Emerging Technologies

“…Diffusion models could be updated as new information related to adoption may be discovered during life cycle analyses. Ultimately, an idealized integration of diffusion and LCA may be one in which each set of the analyses are hard-linked or unified into a single model . One advantage of fully integrated models is that what-if scenarios could be applied to LCA or to diffusion assumptions and the effects are more readily reflected in the environmental impact results.…”