To Which Degree Does Sector Specific Standardization Make Life Cycle Assessments Comparable?—The Case of Global Warming Potential of Smartphones

Abstract

Here attributional life cycle assessments (LCAs) for the same smartphone model are presented by two different organizations (Orange, OGE and Huawei, HuW) and the effect of different modeling approach is analyzed. A difference of around 32% (29.6 kg and 39.2 kg) for CO2e baseline scores is found using same study object and sector specific LCA standard, however, different metrics, emission intensities, and LCA software programs. The CO2e difference is reduced to 12% (29.9 kg and 33.5 kg) when OGE use HuW metrics for use phase power consumption and total mass, and when HuW use OGE metrics for gold mass and silicon die area. Further, a probability test confirms that present baseline climate change results, for one specific study object modeled with two largely different and independent LCA modeling approaches, are comparable if both use the European Telecommunications Standard Institute (ETSI) LCA standard. The general conclusion is that the ETSI LCA standard strongly facilitates comparable CC results for technically comparable smartphone models. Moreover, thanks to the reporting requirements of ETSI LCA standard, a clear understanding of the differences between LCA modeling approaches is obtained. The research also discusses the magnitude of the CO2e reduction potential in the life cycle of smartphones. OPEN ACCESSChallenges 2014, 5 410

Precision of a Streamlined Life Cycle Assessment Approach Used in Eco-Rating of Mobile Phones

“…FLCA studies of smartphones are common [4,[13][14][15][16] so the major hot spots-e.g., for the Global Warming Potential indicator (GWPI) are well known as: integrated circuit (IC) production, screen production, use, and distribution. Depending on the midpoint indicator, the ARD indicator (ARDI) scores for mobile phones, tablets etc.…”

“…Andrae and Vaija attempted to quantify the difference between two FLCA approaches for the same smartphone [4]. They also mentioned that a previous version of eco-rating LCA (Section 15.3.1 in [25]) produced a very similar GWPI score as the FLCA by Vaija for the smartphone at hand.…”

“…Andrae and Vaija [4] suggested that eco-rating LCA methods [25] show similar results as further simplified methods. Andrae et al [3] explained how eco-rating is linked to eco-design and argued that OLCA facilitates a balance between improved material efficiency and linearly increasing GWPI scores.…”

“…Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a systematic analytical method and model by which eco-environmental effects for product systems can be estimated with a precision of around an order of magnitude [4]. The applicability of LCA for electronics has been questioned due to numerous constraints like the complexity of the manufacturing chain and short innovation cycles, making data collection difficult [5].…”

Life cycle assessment of flame retardants in an electronics application

“…Some literature on LCA studies of electronics is available (Andrae et al 2000(Andrae et al , 2004Andrae and Vaija 2014;Ciroth and Franze 2011;Dodbiba et al 2008;Duan et al 2009;Elduque et al 2014;Gunnar Bergendahl et al 2005;Hischier 2015;Hischier and Baudin 2010;Yung et al 2009). Results vary considerably, depending on system boundaries, data sources and assumptions.…”