Sustainability assessment of future-oriented scenarios: a review of data modelling approaches in Life Cycle Assessment

Steering policy-making processes and business long term strategies entails tasks such as e.g. setting up sound environmental long term objectives and targets, assessing implications, and comparing options. To best run these tasks in the context of sustainability assessment, two fundamental ingredients are indispensable: life cycle thinking and analysis of future-oriented scenarios. Considering the whole life cycle of goods and services is necessary to avoid the shifting of problems from one life cycle stage to another, from one geographic area to another and from one environmental medium or protection target to another. Given the proliferation of life cycle thinking-based data modelling approaches, a review was conducted to detect where we stand in defining and framing life cycle thinking-based approaches and related data modelling approaches, what their key features are, and how mature they are. In addition, a scientific workshop was arranged to further discuss data modelling approaches and to screen how Environmental Footprint methodologies can be used to assess future-oriented scenarios. This review represents a stepping stone towards recommendations for sustainability assessment of future-oriented scenarios.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

Tourism Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): Proposal of a New Methodological Framework for Sustainable Consumption and Production

Tourism has become an important part of modern life styles, besides being one of the largest and fastest growing economic sectors worldwide, in spite of occasional shocks over the last decade (UNWTO 2010). Tourism’s contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) is – when direct contribution and multipliers are included - estimated at up to 10% in some advanced, diversified economies. However, this strong growth also implies an increase of undesired environmental impacts. Tourism is globally responsible for 5% of all carbon dioxide emissions, the most important greenhouse gas causing climate change (UNWTO UNEP WMO 2008). However, in terms of radiative forcing, the direct measure for contribution to climate change, tourism even could have share of up to 12.5% (Scott et al., 2010). Also, the greenhouse gas emissions of tourism are estimated to grow at a rather large rate, while a globally emissions should be reduced with up to 80% by 2050 (e.g. Scott et al., 2010). Finally, it has been shown that the eco-efficiency – the economic contribution per ton emissions – of tourism is rather low (Gössling et al., 2005). Theses data totally clash with the view, actually slightly common to many re¬searchers in the past, according to which tourism is a low environmental impact industry (McCrory 2006). Now, it is a shared concept that tourist activities are strongly related to the environment, since, on the one hand, the natural environment itself may be consid¬ered as a major input resource to the processes of tourism industries, and, on the other hand, the development of tourism as a mass industry may severely increase its overall impact on the environment (Butler 2004; Raggi and Petti 2006; Romeril 1989). Given the predictions of an increased role of tourism industries in the world economy, the environmental aspects of, and impacts gen¬erated by tourist activities should be accurately considered according to a Life Cycle Thinking perspective. This concept has been extensively advocated as the proper way of addressing the challenges linked with sustainable development, and, in particular, with those measures for enhancing sustainable consumption and production. In the framework of sustainable development policies, the “Sustainable Consumption and Production and Sustainable Industrial Policy (SCP) Action Plan” (European Commission 2008) is a building block in the EU. In line with this policy, a wide range of environmental instruments have been developed so far for assessment and labelling/certification purposes of travel and tourist services. This ongoing proliferation of different initiatives shows a high degree of diversity in terms of scope, assessment methodologies and means and tools of communication. Although this proliferation reflects the vast variety of travel and tourist products and the complicated nature in assessing their environmental performance, these environmental instruments seem to suffer from a lack of integration and standardisation or quality control. This situation has the potential to confuse or even mislead travellers and the stakeholders within the industry. Research questions were: - What environmental instruments and initiatives are currently supporting the application of the European Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) Action Plan in the travel and tourism industry? - What are their key characteristics and how do they stand in relation to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) principles? - How can these instruments be combined in a general framework capable to render this industry low carbon and more sustainable from an environmental point of view?JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

Developing scientifically-sound Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules: development options, challenges and implications

The Environmental Footprint (EF), launched by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre in cooperation with Directorate-General for the Environment, provides general guidance for comprehensive, scientifically-sound and consistent environmental assessment of products and organisations. The aim of the EF is to ensure science-based decision support for industry and policy making. To make the general-level rules of the EF more relevant and applicable to specific product categories and sectors, the EF guides provide requirements to develop the so called PEF Category Rules (PEFCRs) and OEF Sector Rules (OEFSRs). PEFCRs and OEFSRs are seen as corner stones for consistent and robust assessments instrumental to specific environmental communication forms, namely business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) intended to be used for comparisons. The focus of this paper is on the key challenges in developing PEFCRs.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

Life cycle assessment of Italian and Spanish bovine leather production systems

The objectives of the research here described were to put inevidence the eco-profiles of two product-systems concerning bovine leather manufactured in Italy and Spain, to identify their hot spots and to find out if the different technologies and cooperative management solutions adopted led to significant environmental differences in the two systems analysed. The environmental impacts of two systems were analysed by means of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. At the macro-phase level, tanning resulted to be the most burdensome phase for almost all impact categories in both systems. At the level of the specific tannery phases, themain hot spots were tanning, dyeing-retaining and soakingin the Italian system, soaking-liming, tanning and retanningin the Spanish one. The main differences between the two systems and a few options for improvement were identified at three levels: energy mix, industrial processes and solid waste management. Despite the technological and waste management dissimilarity of the two systems, their total environmental burdens appeared quite similar. However, relevant differencesin the most burdening phases, operations and substances are highlighted in this paper. Improvements in both systems should be aimed at by means of an optimisation of tanning processes and reduction of chemicals use. Further studies dealing within ventories of recovery processes and land fill disposal of wastes are recommended

Final technical report: Certification of low carbon farming practices

In 2010, the European Parliament asked the European Commission to carry out a pilot project on the “certification of low-carbon farming practices in the European Union” to promote reductions of GHG emissions from farming. The overall aim of the project was to assess how efforts of European farmers to produce agricultural products with carbon-neutral or low-carbon-footprint farming practices might be incorporated into policy approaches (possibly via certification), so as to promote the reduction of GHG emissions from agriculture. The project included: i) a review of existing farm-level lifecycle-based climate-related certification and labelling schemes, ii) the development and testing of a user friendly open-source carbon calculator suitable for assessing the lifecycle GHG emissions from different types of farming systems across the whole EU, and iii) the design/assessment of policy options for promoting low-carbon farming practices.JRC.H.4-Monitoring Agricultural Resource

Integration of environment and nutrition in life cycle assessment of food items: opportunities and challenges

This report is the outcome of a consensus-building project to agree on best practices for environmental and nutritional Life Cycle Assessment (nLCA) methodology, and identify future research needs. The project involved 30 nutritional and environmental LCA researchers from 18 countries. It focused on the assessment of food items (as opposed to meals or diets).Best practice recommendations were developed to address the intended purpose of an LCA study and related modeling approach, choice of an appropriate functional unit, assessment of nutritional value, and reporting nLCA results. An nLCA study should report the quantities of as many essential nutrients as possible and aim to provide information on the nutritional quality and/or health impacts in addition to nutrient quantities. Outstanding issues requiring further research attention include: defining a minimum number of nutrients to be considered in an nLCA study; treatment of nutrients to limit; use of nutrient indexes; further development of Impact Assessment methods; representation of nutritional changes that may occur during subsequent distribution and food preparation in cradle-to-gate nLCA studies; and communication of data uncertainty and variability. More data are required for different regions (particularly developing countries); for the processing, distribution, retail, and consumption life cycle stages; and for food loss and waste. Finally, there is a need to extend nLCA methodology for the assessment of meals and diets, to consider further how to account for the multi-functionality of food in a sustainability framework, and to set nLCA studies within the context of environmental limits.These results provide a robust basis for improving nLCA methodology and applying it to identify solutions that minimize the trade-offs between nourishing populations and safeguarding the environment

The value of manure - Manure as co-product in life cycle assessment

Research ArticleLivestock production is important for food security, nutrition, and landscape maintenance, but it is associated with several environmental impacts. To assess the risk and benefits arising from livestock production, transparent and robust indicators are required, such as those offered by life cycle assessment. A central question in such approaches is how environmental burden is allocated to livestock products and to manure that is re-used for agricultural production. To incentivize sustainable use of manure, it should be considered as a co-product as long as it is not disposed of, or wasted, or applied in excess of crop nutrient needs, in which case it should be treated as a waste. This paper proposes a theoretical approach to define nutrient requirements based on nutrient response curves to economic and physical optima and a pragmatic approach based on crop nutrient yield adjusted for nutrient losses to atmosphere and water. Allocation of environmental burden to manure and other livestock products is then based on the nutrient value from manure for crop production using the price of fertilizer nutrients. We illustrate and discuss the proposed method with two case studiesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Towards stronger measures for sustainable consumption and production policies: proposal of a new fiscal framework based on a life cycle approach

Purpose. The sustainable development challenge that many economies are facing worldwide requires stronger measures because some environmental issues (e.g. global warming) are becoming exponentially worse. If we do not act at once, this negative trend has the potential to keep on radically changing the living conditions on the Earth. One of the most effective ways to address this challenge might be developing new Market Based Instruments (MBIs) by adopting a life cycle perspective. In this paper we propose a new taxation framework based on Value Added Tax (VAT) and life cycle thinking. This framework might have the potential to drastically change the current consumption and production patterns towards a product life-cycle oriented economy. Methods. To identify the elements of a new framework enabling to improve the eco-efficiency of the current consumption and production patterns, firstly we have screened the potential of MBIs to face the sustainable development challenge in relation to the existing EU policy framework. Among MBIs, particular emphasis was given to VAT due to its potential to affect market prices. The key research advances for establishing a green VAT framework were then tracked down to outline the state-of-the-art. Moreover, how to use Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) results for differentiating VAT rates has been investigated. On this basis, a range of methodology proposals to change the current VAT framework have been outlined. A hypothetical case study has been simulated to test these proposals. Results. Some relevant changes to the current VAT taxation system are proposed in this paper bearing in mind the LCA principles and the “getting prices right” policy. Special emphasis was given to the methodological framework needed to differentiate VAT rates according to environmental performance of products. In this context, fiscal neutrality issues related to State budgets have been also taken into account by conceptualising more cautious approaches for differentiating VAT rates. Conclusions. This piece of research has identified life cycle thinking as possible perspective on which basis product VAT rates might be differentiated. Further studies and an impact assessment procedure are needed to evaluate the actual feasibility of this new taxation framework. If the response of this assessment were positive, policy makers, companies and other stakeholders concerned should set out a suite of measures to further fine-tune, test, establish, and facilitate the implementation of this green VAT framework.JRC.H.8-Sustainability Assessmen

Ecodesign for services: an innovative comprehensive method

Service organisations, as well as manufacturing ones, may be responsible for significant negative environmental impacts. To minimise them and to aim to those market segments that are sensitive to environmental issues, service organisations could improve the environmental soundness of their services through the integration of environmental issues in the design processes. In an attempt to meet these needs, the authors have developed an innovative model based on quality function deployment (QFD) which could support environmentally conscious design of services. This paper aims to illustrate the framework of the proposed model, and to analyse its strengths and weaknesses to identify research perspectives.QFD; quality function deployment; pollution prevention; ecodesign; ecology; ecological design; QFDE; environmental pollution; service organisations; environmental impact; market segments; environmentally conscious design; sustainability; sustainable development; sustainable economy.