Global normalisation factors for the Environmental Footprint and Life Cycle Assessment

This report quantitatively characterizes environmental impacts at global scale in relation to the 16 impact categories of the Environmental Footprint (EF) and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), namely: climate change; ozone depletion; human toxicity, cancer; human toxicity, non-cancer; freshwater ecotoxicity; particulate matter; ionising radiation; photochemical ozone formation; acidification; eutrophication, terrestrial; eutrophication, marine; eutrophication, freshwater; land use; water use; resource use, fossils and resource use, minerals and metals. The results are recommended to be used as normalisation factors (NFs) in the context of the Environmental Footprint (EF) for assessing the relevance of the impacts associated to a product or system. In LCA, according to ISO 14044 (ISO 2006), normalisation (similar to weighting) is an optional steps of Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA). The normalisation factors represent the total impact of a reference region for a certain impact category (e.g. climate change, eutrophication, etc.) in a reference year. For the EF, due to the international nature of supply chains, the use of global normalisation factors is recommended. Normalisation has a relevant role to play in the Environmental Footprint to support the identification of the most relevant impact categories, life cycle stages, process and resource consumptions or emissions to ensure that the focus is put on those aspects that matter the most and for communication purposes. The global normalisation factors reported here are built on a vast collection of data on emissions and resources extracted at global scale in 2010. Key choices were made for compiling the inventories, which were then characterised by using the EF midpoint LCIA method. The results are reported for each impact category. Coverage, completeness and robustness of the underpinning inventories are discussed. With this, the report supports the generation of life cycle based indicators for monitoring the environmental dimension of the sustainability of supply chains, including contributions to global environmental impacts in relation to planetary boundaries. This in turn enables a life cycle based assessment of the sustainability of the intensification of primary production for a greening EU economy.JRC.D.1-Bio-econom

Structure and pattern of food consumption in Italian household: an analysis of impact on climate change and land use

The environmental impacts of food consumption of Italian households in 2011 have been calculated adopting an Environmentally Extended Input-Output Analysis, using EXIOBASE v3 as the underpinning database for the assessment. Because of the structure of such database, it is possible to divide domestic and imported final demand. Climate change and Land use related impacts are calculated then matched with household expenditures for the same year. The food consumption in an average Italian household for 2011 results in a total Climate change of 4237 kg CO2eq and in a total Land use impact of 10 kg Cdeficit. There are limitations due to a non-perfect match of food product groups in EXIOBASE and Italian National Statistics. Nevertheless, with this approach it is possible to investigate environmental impacts in relation to expenditure patterns of the families

Supporting information to the characterisation factors of recommended EF Life Cycle Impact Assessment methods: New methods and differences with ILCD

In 2013, the Environmental Footprint methodology has been established with a specific Recommendation (2013/179/EU), within the framework of the “Single Market for Green Products” communication (COM/2013/0196). The International Life Cycle Data system, developed since 2007, released in 2010 and continuously maintained by JRC, has been adopted in the EF framework. ILCD format and nomenclature were adopted as requirements for EF. Given the different needs and goals of the EF, some methods for the Life Cycle Impact Assessment have been changed compared to ILCD (and therefore the elementary flows have been adapted accordingly, and to some extent, the format has been expanded). The the LCIA methods are developed within the database as ILCD-formatted xml files to allow electronic import into LCA software; The LCIA methods are implemented as separate data sets which contain all the descriptive metadata documentation and the characterisation factors assigned to different elementary flows (that are also xml files within the DB). This document provide a view on the changes occurred within the methods for the mid-point impact assessment (the EF is considering for now only impacts at the level of potential changes, not at the potential damage level, which was captured in ILCD scheme for the methods at the end-point level). The changes and adaptations occurred within the ILCD scheme, that led to the creation of the current EF set of methods and a new package, based on ILCD format, containing new files for LCIA methods, can be summarized as follows: • 6 methods are completely new, or updated according to the newest releases of the old methods adopted in ILCD. • The elementary flow list has been fixed and expanded according to the needs of the new methods • Within the new methods several flows have been spatially differentiated (in ILCD format the location attribute is resolved at the method level, not at the elementary flow level) • For several flows that were not characterized (both in newly added methods and in the pre-existing ones that were not modified), a CF has been adopted, where a direct proxy for a specific substance/compartment was available. • Specific exceptions, integrations or corrections have been implemented in different methods. All these aspects are detailed within the document. Furthermore, additional files have been released, containing an exhaustive view of all the changes occurred in the transition phase between the ILCD and the EF scheme (see annex2). Additional updates will be released through the website of the European Platform on LCA (http://eplca.jrc.ec.europa.eu/). Other methods (e.g. those related to toxicity aspects) are under development, during the editing of this document; therefore an updated version will be released as soon as the new recommended methods are defined.JRC.D.1-Bio-econom