Life-cycle assessment of buildings: a Review

Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is one of various management tools for evaluating environmental concerns. This paper reviews LCA from a buildings perspective. It highlights the need for its use within the building sector, and the importance of LCA as a decision making support tool. It discusses LCA methodologies and applications within the building sector, reviewing some of the life-cycle studies applied to buildings or building materials and component combinations within the last fifteen years in Europe and the United States. It highlights the problems of a lack of an internationally comparable and agreed data inventory and assessment methodology which hinder the application of LCA within the building industry. It identifies key areas for future research as (i) the whole process of construction, (ii) the relative weighting of different environmental impacts and (iii) applications in developing countries

A LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT OF A DIESEL GENERATOR SET

Today, nearly every industry needs a continuous power supply, as data loss can be more expensive than the capital expenditure for the backup power equipment. The demand for emergency standby power (ESP) generator sets is on the rise because of increasing industrialization. With increased industrialization comes a societal concern about the issue of natural resource depletion and environmental degradation. In response, manufacturing companies are providing more sustainable solutions in their products and processes. In this work, the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology has been applied to quantify the energy demands of each life cycle stage of an ESP generator set and identify areas of possible energy reductions in order to improve product sustainability. The energy demands were calculated using an Excel spreadsheet and data from Ecoinvent and the Inventory of Carbon and Energy (ICE) database. The life cycle inventory (LCI) was completed using data obtained from the manufacturing company and its suppliers. The results revealed that the use phase had the largest energy demand at nearly 95% of the total demand, followed by materials at 4%, transportation at 1%, and then manufacturing at less than 1%. Recommendations for potential energy reductions were made to the manufacturer. Because the use phase dominates the overall energy demand, increasing fuel efficiency will have the largest impact; however, the energy demands of the other stages should not be overlooked. In order for the generator set to have the most sustainable life, the goal should be to reduce energy demands wherever possible. Such reductions can be made by increasing remanufacturing rates and using materials with a higher recycled content

Life Cycle Assessment of a Medium Voltage Protection Relay : A case study

Sustainability is becoming increasingly important in today’s business. Not only is there a pressure from governments and regulators, but also from other stakeholders. For example, customers are becoming increasingly concerned about sustainability when making purchasing decisions, and from ABB’s point of view, both the company and their customers are now becoming more and more interested in Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) and Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) for their products. As a result, this thesis was commissioned by ABB ELDS. The main purpose of this thesis is to address ABB ELDS’s need for new LCA’s and EPD’s for their medium voltage protection relays, while also contributing to the literature. The main research question is “what are the potential environmental impacts of a medium voltage protection relay throughout its life cycle?”. The study also aims to determine what are the most impactful life cycle stages and processes as well as to identify potential improvement opportunities. A case study is conducted for two representative relay configurations of the Relion 615 series by adopting the internationally standardized method called LCA according to ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. The main intended application is for an EPD according to ISO 14025, and the adopted product category rules (PCR) is EPDItaly007, which is based on EN 50693. The LCA software used is SimaPro 9.3.0.2 with the database ecoinvent v3.8. The impact assessment is conducted according to the standard EN 15804:2012+A2:2019, as required by EPDItaly007. The study shows that the most impactful life cycle stage of a relay is the use stage due to its power consumption. The second most impactful life cycle stage is the upstream manufacturing stage, mainly due to the production and use of integrated circuits and printed wiring boards. The use of precious metals and air freight was also found to have a significant impact on the environment. Finally, the study shows that the overall environmental impacts can be largely reduced by using renewable energy in different life cycle stages. The study is significant from a managerial point of view because the results are used for developing and publishing an EPD, to satisfy the requests of the case company’s customers. Also, because the results are interpreted to establish conclusions and recommendations, it provides value for product development and improvement. Finally, it provides novel contributions to the literature because current LCA studies of these types of products are scarce. The LCA has been internally reviewed by LCA experts of the case company. However, it has not been verified by an accredited third-party; the thesis was submitted during the same time as the audit process started. Thus, the results are subject to change from the official EPD

Eco-management accounting in Germany: Concepts and practical implementation. Final report for the project Management accounting and environmental management: Towards the sustainable enterprise. A study of operational and material flow analysis, particulary as it is practised in Germany and how it might be used as a part of management accounting. A study sponsored by the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek NWO

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How coordinated sectoral responses to environmental policy increase the availability of product life cycle data

Purpose Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs) have a significant potential for contributing to consumption-based approaches to climate change. This paper provides an important building block towards a theoretical model of the factors accounting for variations in the availability of life cycle data across countries. It does so by positing a mechanism linking industry associations’ institutional role within environmental policy processes to the availability of product life data and by empirically validating it. Methods Interviews, qualitative document analysis, web scraping, quantitative text analysis, set-theoretical causal reasoning, and process tracing. Results and discussion Environmental policies that stipulate industry-government deliberations and assign a coordinating or mediating role to industry peak associations can stimulate the exchange of environmental information among industrial sectors. The policy instruments of determination of ‘best available techniques’ (BAT) towards standard setting, negotiated collective agreements and carbon pricing all contribute towards the institutionalisation of organised information exchange within industry. This lowers transaction costs for the monitoring, reporting and verification of sectoral environmental data and can thus be conducive to the creation of sectoral life cycle assessment data, with positive knock-on effects on the availability of firm- and product-specific LCA labels. Conclusions Industry associations’ institutional role within environmental policy processes can partially explain cross-national variations in the availability of product life cycle inventories

Estimation of environmental impact of conversion to organic agriculture in Hamburg using the Life-Cycle-Assessment method

Commissioned by the Ministry of Environment of Hamburg, Germany, an environmental impact assessment using the Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) method was carried out during 1995 and 1996. In a scenario, the effect of a complete transition from conventional to organic agriculture of about 5,674 ha and 4,669 livestock units in a rural part of Hamburg was investigated using 9 impact categories. The study was based on the analysis of 15 farms representative of the farms in the region, mainly dairy and beef cattle farms with some cash crops, in close cooperation with local advisers and other experts. Several workshops were held to integrate the local public, in particular the experts and administrative staff related to farming and nature protection. It was estimated for the study area for the year 1995 that through the conversion to organic agriculture, the eutrophication potential could be lowered by reducing the nitrogen (N) surplus by 75% (from 311 t to 77 t) and turning the phosphate (P) surplus of 47 t into a deficit of 19 t. The ammonia emission decreased to 69% of the conventional level (from 238 t to 165 t) resulting in a similar reduction of the acidification potential (from 474 t to 328 t SO2-equivalents). Compared to conventional farming, 55% of the primary energy was saved by organic agriculture (38,540 instead of 84,760 GJ), which also lowered the global warming potential by 31% from 26,365 t to 18,271 t CO2-equivalents. No pesticides were used, thus saving about 22.7 t of chemical agents. This would lead to positive effects in the impact categories drinking water quality, human toxicity and ecotoxicity, especially as most pesti¬cides were applied illegally and not in compliance with the regulations regarding minimum distance to surface water. The biodiversity impact assessed by evaluating several indicators during field visits showed a clear improvement for arable land, permanent grassland and landscape structures (such as ditches and field boundaries). No differences were determined for the categories soil protection and landscape image due to specific site conditions and cropping system effects. The study confirmed the suitability of the LCA approach for com¬paring different farming systems. However, the results led to strong reactions from some experts and particularly farmers and their representatives