Perspective in life cycle impact assessment: A structured approach to combine of the technosphere, ecosphere and valuesphere

Hofstetter, Patrick

doi:10.1007/bf02978561

Cited by 136 publications

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“…Expert-based weighting factors of these three impact categories for human toxicity are set to 100, 10 and 1, respectively. Aggregation may also be established with the concept of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), as described in detail by Hofstetter (1998). Other limitations concerning the application of toxicity potentials, such as the assumption of linearity between emissions and potential effects (Owens, 1997) and disregarding interactions between substances, are far more difficult…”

Section: Application Of Toxicity Potentials In Lcasmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…birds, mammals) in the life cycle impact assessment of toxic substances; 7 the inclusion of a further weighting step in the calculation of human toxicity potentials for (non)-carcinogenic substances, as the type of impact that firstly occurs is used in the calculations irrespective of its severity. The further weighting step may, for instance, be based on the concept of Disability Adjusted Life Years (DALYs), as described in detail by Hofstetter (1998); 8 the extension of the fate and effects analysis of acidification and terrestrial eutrophication from the European scale to the global scale. Adaption of existing global fate and effect models, for instance, the global nitrogen and sulfur model of UNEP/RIVM (1999), may be useful in this respect.…”

Section: Chaptermentioning

confidence: 99%

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Uncertainty and variability in environmental life-cycle assessment

Huijbregts

2002

Int J LCA

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General introductionIncreased rates of resource depletion, land use, solid waste generation and emissions of pollutants became issues of broad public concern in the beginning of the seventies (Meadows et al., 1972). Unfortunately, most of these problems are still with us today, and some of them have increased substantially (World Resources Institute, 1996). One way to decrease the environmental pressure of human activities is the environmentally improvement of production processes (Reijnders, 1996). In this respect, an important question to be answered is 'how exactly can we measure the environmentally improvement of production processes?' Environmental life-cycle assessment (LCA) aims to answer that question. The first section of this chapter provides an overview of the LCA framework. Although the framework itself is well-established, the application of the framework is in many aspects problematic. A brief overview of the problems associated with the actual implementation of the framework is described in second paragraph. Finally, the aim and the structure of the present thesis is outlined in the third paragraph. § 1.1 Environmental life cycle assessment Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool for the assessment of the environmental impact of product systems (Heijungs et al. 1992). It considers the full life cycle of a product from resource extraction to waste disposal. LCA is generally divided into four phases: goal and scope definition, inventory analysis, impact assessment, and interpretation (Figure 1.1; ISO, 1997a).In the goal and scope definition, the aim and the subject of an LCA study are determined and a 'functional unit' is defined. An example of a functional unit is 'the consumption of 100 kg apples' with, for instance, the aim to compare the environmental impacts of different agricultural production processes of apples. In the inventory analysis, for each of the product systems considered data are gathered for all the relevant processes involved in the life cycle. A product system can be considered as a combination of processes needed for the functioning of a product or service. The outcome of the inventory analysis is a list of all extractions of resources and emissions of substances caused by the functional unit for every product system considered, generally disregarding place and time of the extractions and releases. The matrix method can be used to perform the inventory analysis (Heijungs, 1996(Heijungs, , 1997 where i is the vector of environmental interventions, H is the environmental intervention matrix, representing the extractions of resources and emissions of substances per unit process, G is the technology matrix representing the inter-process flows needed for the functioning of the product system, and u is the external supply vector, related to the functional unit. Life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) aims to improve the understanding of the inventory result. Firstly, it is determined which extractions and emissions contribute to which impact categories. An impact category can...

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Section: Application Of Toxicity Potentials In Lcasmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Chaptermentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncertainty and variability in environmental life-cycle assessment

Huijbregts

2002

Int J LCA

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“…The effects of land occupation was quantified as disappeared fraction of species to allow aggregation of land use damage with other ecosystem impacts such as climate change (De Schryver et al 2009). Value choices in the damage model were assessed by establishing three scenarios following the Cultural Theory (Thompson et al 1990;Hofstetter, 1998), and parameter uncertainty was quantified through Monte Carlo simulation.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To handle value choices in a consistent way, the Cultural Theory can be applied (Thompson et al 1990;Hofstetter 1998). Three cultural perspectives are generally used, i.e., the individualistic, the egalitarian, and the hierarchist perspective (Goedkoop and Spriensma 1999;Goedkoop et al 2008).…”

Section: Perspectivesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Uncertainties in the application of the species area relationship for characterisation factors of land occupation in life cycle assessment

Schryver

Goedkoop

Leuven

et al. 2010

Int J Life Cycle Assess

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Purpose Uncertainties in land use damage modeling are recognized, but hardly quantified in life cycle assessment (LCA). The objective of this study is to analyze the influence of various key assumptions and uncertainties within the development of characterisation factors (CFs) for land use in LCA. We assessed the influence on land use CFs of (1) parameter uncertainty and (2) the choice for a constant or land use-specific species accumulation factor z and including or excluding regional effects. Methods A model framework was developed to analyze the uncertainties of CFs for six land use types and three agricultural practices. The CFs are expressed as potential disappeared fraction (PDF) of vascular plant species based on the species area relationship (S=c.A z ). The species area relationship describes the relation between the species number and area size, with help of the species accumulation factor z and the species richness factor c. A dataset representative for Great Britain was used to quantify both modeling choices and parameter uncertainty. Modeling choices were analyzed by defining three coherent scenarios, based on cultural theory perspectives. The parameter uncertainties of average species number and species accumulation factor z were quantified using Monte Carlo simulation.Results and discussion Pair-wise comparison of the CFs shows that 68-85% of the CFs significantly differ from each other within each perspective. It is found that the ranking of organic, less intensive, and intensive land practices of each land use type is unaltered by the chosen model scenario. However, the absolute values of the CFs can change from negative to positive scores with an average difference of 0.8 PDF between the two extreme perspectives, i.e., individualistic and egalitarian. The difference between these scenarios is for 40% explained by the choice in z and for 60% by the choice in including regional effects. Within the egalitarian and hierarchist perspective the species accumulation factor z is for more than 80% responsible for the parameter uncertainty. Conclusions Modeling choices and uncertainties within the species area relationship hardly change the ranking of the different land practices but largely influence the absolute value of the CFs for land use. The absolute change in the land use CFs can change the interpretation of land use impacts compared with other stressors such as climate change.

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“…In Ecoindicators 99 the impact category respiratory inorganics is introduced which is equivalent to winter smog (defined in Eco-indicator 95) (Goedkoop and Spriensma, 2001). The winter smog model adopted in Eco-indicator 99 was originally developed by Hofstetter (1998), which covers the pollutants SO x NO x and SPM and takes the fate of substances into account. But in most of the other widely accepted LCIA models, winter smog is not included e.g.…”

Section: Lca Of Light-weight Eco-compositesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Light-Weight Eco-composites

Guo¹

2012

Springer Theses

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LCA of Light-weight Eco-composites Statement of originality 2 Statement of originalityI hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person.Contributions made to the research of this thesis by others, with whom I have worked with are explicitly acknowledged. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others with data collection and modification of process-oriented model DNDC is acknowledged. Miao GuoSep 2010 LCA of Light-weight Eco-compositesAbstract 3 AbstractThe environmental profiles of novel wheat based foam materials were investigated in this thesis using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods. The LCAs were developed using primary data collected from industrial sources combined with new laboratory experiments supplemented with secondary data from publicly available sources.Laboratory research was conducted to obtain important missing data on WBFs for the LCA modelling, including physico-chemical parameters, biodegradability and energy recovery under anaerobic digestion conditions.Contribution analysis suggested that the emissions evolved from the wheat agroecosystem and PVOH production, together with the energy and infrastructure involved in WBF production were the major contributors to the environmental burdens of the WBF life cycle in most impact categories. The atmospheric emissions resulting from WBF degradation at the end-of-life also emerged as another important contributor to environmental impact. Amongst the diverse ‗end-of-life' scenarios examined, AD and home composting were suggested to be the optimum choices for WBF waste treatment. This research discusses two N 2 O modelling approaches and presents a method to expand the system boundary by integrating the process-oriented model DNDC for field emissions into the LCA. Sensitivity analysis suggests that the environmental profiles of agricultural products are influenced substantially by the system boundary definition. LCA of Light-weight Eco-compositesAbstract 4 Furthermore, it suggests that the ‗general rule' in LCA practice by applying an empirical model or a default emission factor (EF) could deliver unreliable LCA findings.This study also evaluated the sensitivity of the LCA results to methodology and data variations and quantified the uncertainties in the LCA outcomes arising from uncertainty in the inventory and data variability. This has led to an increase in confidence in the LCA findings. At the same time it indicates the areas where improvements in data or methods are needed in order for robust conclusions to be drawn and unbiased information to be delivered e.g. the methodological rigidity of characterization models, the IPCC Tier 1 EF uncertainty range. LCA of Light-weight Eco-compositesAcknowledgements 5

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Perspective in life cycle impact assessment: A structured approach to combine of the technosphere, ecosphere and valuesphere

Cited by 136 publications

References 0 publications

Uncertainty and variability in environmental life-cycle assessment

Uncertainty and variability in environmental life-cycle assessment

Uncertainties in the application of the species area relationship for characterisation factors of land occupation in life cycle assessment

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Light-Weight Eco-composites

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