LC‐IMPACT: A regionalized life cycle damage assessment method

Abstract

Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) is a lively field of research, and data and models are continuously improved in terms of impact pathways covered, reliability, and spatial detail. However, many of these advancements are scattered throughout the scientific literature, making it difficult for practitioners to apply the new models. Here, we present the LC‐IMPACT method that provides characterization factors at the damage level for 11 impact categories related to three areas of protection (human health, ecosystem quality, natural resources). Human health damage is quantified as disability adjusted life years, damage to ecosystem quality as global species extinction equivalents (based on potentially disappeared fraction of species), and damage to mineral resources as kilogram of extra ore extracted. Seven of the impact categories include spatial differentiation at various levels of spatial scale. The influence of value choices related to the time horizon and the level of scientific evidence of the impacts considered is quantified with four distinct sets of characterization factors. We demonstrate the applicability of the proposed method with an illustrative life cycle assessment example of different fuel options in Europe (petrol or biofuel). Differences between generic and regionalized impacts vary up to two orders of magnitude for some of the selected impact categories, highlighting the importance of spatial detail in LCIA. This article met the requirements for a gold – gold JIE data openness badge described at http://jie.click/badges.

Water Resources for Sustainable Healthy Diets: State of the Art and Outlook

“…For individual food products, WFs have been assessed along the whole supply chain. Within life cycle assessment (LCA), which is product-and impact-oriented, assessments for individual products are common [21], although not always based on detailed geospatial data [22].…”

“…Regarding endpoint indicators, LCA aims to quantify the impact of water stress on human health [22]. There are indeed relations between water and human health.…”

“…However, it is especially economic and not physical water scarcity that is responsible for the lack of sufficient clean water access to humans, as infrastructure is key for clean water supply. This aspect is however not included in the LCA endpoint indicator [22,83]. The latter attempts to quantify the damage of local water stress to local human health based on malnutrition, as described by different authors [22,83,84].…”

“…This aspect is however not included in the LCA endpoint indicator [22,83]. The latter attempts to quantify the damage of local water stress to local human health based on malnutrition, as described by different authors [22,83,84]. A threshold for required water resources to provide a healthy diet is set at 1300 m 3 /(year and•capita), which equals 3562 L/(day and capita).…”

“…This amount quantifies green and blue water resources required for a standard diet as first proposed by Falkenmark and Rockstrom [5]. Pfister et al [83] and Verones et al [22] propose a global map of human health impacts of water consumption (in DALY/m 3 ), for 11,050 watersheds. This approach and the resulting map are problematic in many ways:…”