Life cycle assessment of emerging technologies: Evaluation techniques at different stages of market and technical maturity

Life cycle assessment (LCA) analysts are increasingly being asked to conduct life cycleâ based systems level analysis at the earliest stages of technology development. While early assessments provide the greatest opportunity to influence design and ultimately environmental performance, it is the stage with the least available data, greatest uncertainty, and a paucity of analytic tools for addressing these challenges. While the fundamental approach to conducting an LCA of emerging technologies is akin to that of LCA of existing technologies, emerging technologies pose additional challenges. In this paper, we present a broad set of market and technology characteristics that typically influence an LCA of emerging technologies and identify questions that researchers must address to account for the most important aspects of the systems they are studying. The paper presents: (a) guidance to identify the specific technology characteristics and dynamic market context that are most relevant and unique to a particular study, (b) an overview of the challenges faced by early stage assessments that are unique because of these conditions, (c) questions that researchers should ask themselves for such a study to be conducted, and (d) illustrative examples from the transportation sector to demonstrate the factors to consider when conducting LCAs of emerging technologies. The paper is intended to be used as an organizing platform to synthesize existing methods, procedures and insights and guide researchers, analysts and technology developer to better recognize key study design elements and to manage expectations of study outcomes.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154465/1/jiec12954-sup-0001-SuppMat.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154465/2/jiec12954.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/154465/3/jiec12954_am.pd

A comparative life cycle assessment of soybean-based and mineral oil lubricants in aluminum rolling.

A comparative life cycle assessment of soybean-based and mineral oil lubricants in aluminum rolling

The impact of refrigeration on food losses and associated greenhouse gas emissions throughout the supply chain

One-third of food produced globally is wasted while approximately 800 million people suffer from hunger. Meanwhile, food losses produce approximately 8% of total anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This study develops a food loss estimation tool to assess how improved access to the cold chain could impact food loss and its associated GHG emissions for seven food types in seven regions. This study estimates that poor cold chain infrastructure could be responsible for up to 620 million metric tons (Mmt) of food loss, responsible for 1.8 GtCO _2 -eq annually. Utilizing fully optimized cold chains could save over 100 Mmt of fruit and vegetable loss in South & Southeast Asia and over 700 Mmt CO2-eq in Sub-Saharan Africa. Developing more localized, less industrialized (‘farm-to-table’) food supply chains in both industrialized and non-industrialized contexts may save greater quantities of food than optimized cold chains. Utilizing localized supply chains could save over 250 Mmt of roots and tubers globally (over 100 Mmt more savings than those of an optimized cold chain) and reduce GHG emissions from meat losses in industrialized regions by over 300 Mmt CO2-eq. Due to the differences in the environmental intensity of food types, cold chain investments that prioritize reducing overall food losses will have very different outcomes than those that prioritize reducing GHG emissions

Agent-based life cycle assessment for switchgrass-based bioenergy systems

International audienc

Comparative Human Toxicity Impact of Electricity Produced from Shale Gas and Coal

The human toxicity impact (HTI) of electricity produced from shale gas is lower than the HTI of electricity produced from coal, with 90% confidence using a Monte Carlo Analysis. Two different impact assessment methods estimate the HTI of shale gas electricity to be 1–2 orders of magnitude less than the HTI of coal electricity (0.016–0.024 DALY/GWh versus 0.69–1.7 DALY/GWh). Further, an implausible shale gas scenario where all fracturing fluid and untreated produced water is discharged directly to surface water throughout the lifetime of a well also has a lower HTI than coal electricity. Particulate matter dominates the HTI for both systems, representing a much larger contribution to the overall toxicity burden than VOCs or any aquatic emission. Aquatic emissions can become larger contributors to the HTI when waste products are inadequately disposed or there are significant infrastructure or equipment failures. Large uncertainty and lack of exposure data prevent a full risk assessment; however, the results of this analysis provide a comparison of relative toxicity, which can be used to identify target areas for improvement and assess potential trade-offs with other environmental impacts

Principal indicators to monitor sustainable development goals

Hundreds of indicators are available to monitor progress of countries and regions towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). However, the sheer number of indicators poses unprecedented challenges for data collection and compilation. Here we identify a subset of SDG indicators (principal indicators) that are relatively easy to collect data for and also are representative for all the indicators by considering the complex interrelationship among them. We find 147 principal indicators that can represent at least 90% of the annual variances of 351 SDG indicators in the past (2000–2017) and are expected to do so for the future (2018–2030) with the lowest difficulty of data collection. Our results can guide future investment in building the data infrastructure for SDG monitoring to give priorities to these principal indicators for global comparison