scholarly journals Economic and life-cycle assessment of OME3-5 as transport fuel: A comparison of production pathways

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Felipe Rodriguez-Vallejo ◽  
Antonio Valente ◽  
Gonzalo Guillén-Gosálbez ◽  
Benoit Chachuat
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Transport Sector ◽  
Renewable Fuels ◽  
Promising Alternative ◽  
Polyoxymethylene Dimethyl Ethers

Reducing the contribution of the transport sector to climate change calls for a transition towards renewable fuels. Polyoxymethylene dimethyl ethers (OMEn) constitute a promising alternative to fossil-based diesel. This article...

scholarly journals Mitigation Life Cycle Assessment: Best Practices from LCA of Energy and Water Infrastructure That Incurs Impacts to Mitigate Harm

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 992 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Grubert ◽  
Jennifer Stokes-Draut
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Best Practices ◽  
Assessment Tool ◽  
Sustainability Assessment ◽  
Functional Unit ◽  
Environmental Harm ◽  
Environmental Costs ◽  
Lca Results

Climate change will require societal-scale infrastructural changes. Balancing priorities for water, energy, and climate will demand that approaches to water and energy management deviate from historical practice. Infrastructure designed to mitigate environmental harm, particularly related to climate change, is likely to become increasingly prevalent. Understanding the implications of such infrastructure for environmental quality is thus of interest. Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) is a common sustainability assessment tool that aims to quantify the total, multicriteria environmental impact caused by a functional unit. Notably, however, LCA quantifies impacts in the form of environmental “costs” of delivering the functional unit. In the case of mitigation infrastructures, LCA results can be confusing because they are generally reported as the harmful impacts of performing mitigation rather than as net impacts that incorporate benefits of successful mitigation. This paper argues for defining mitigation LCA as a subtype of LCA to facilitate better understanding of results and consistency across studies. Our recommendations are informed by existing LCA literature on mitigation infrastructure, focused particularly on stormwater and carbon management. We specifically recommend that analysts: (1) use a performance-based functional unit; (2) be attentive to burden shifting; and (3) assess and define uncertainty, especially related to mitigation performance.

scholarly journals Method for a Multi-Vehicle, Simulation-Based Life Cycle Assessment and Application to Berlin’s Motorized Individual Transport

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (18) ◽  
pp. 7302
Author(s):  
Anne Magdalene Syré ◽  
Florian Heining ◽  
Dietmar Göhlich
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Greenhouse Gas Emissions ◽  
Greenhouse Gas ◽  
Ecological Impacts ◽  
Transport Sector ◽  
Gas Emissions ◽  
Vehicle Simulation ◽  
Transport Simulation ◽  
Whole Life Cycle

The transport sector in Germany causes one-quarter of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions. One potential solution to reduce these emissions is the use of battery electric vehicles. Although a number of life cycle assessments have been conducted for these vehicles, the influence of a transport system-wide transition has not been addressed sufficiently. Therefore, we developed a method which combines life cycle assessment with an agent-based transport simulation and synthetic electric-, diesel- and gasoline-powered vehicle models. We use a transport simulation to obtain the number of vehicles, their lifetime mileage and road-specific consumption. Subsequently, we analyze the product systems’ vehicle production, use phase and end-of-life. The results are scaled depending on the covered distance, the vehicle weight and the consumption for the whole life cycle. The results indicate that the sole transition of drive trains is insufficient to significantly lower the greenhouse gas emissions. However, sensitivity analyses demonstrate that there is a considerable potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with higher shares of renewable energies, a different vehicle distribution and a higher lifetime mileage. The method facilitates the assessment of the ecological impacts of complete car-based transportation in urban agglomerations and is able to analyze different transport sectors.

scholarly journals Evaluating climate change pathways through a building's lifecycle based on Dynamic Life Cycle Assessment

2019 ◽  
Vol 164 ◽  
pp. 106377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Koji Negishi ◽  
Alexandra Lebert ◽  
Denise Almeida ◽  
Jacques Chevalier ◽  
Ligia Tiruta-Barna
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle

scholarly journals Life Cycle Assessment of Forest-Based Products: A Review

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (17) ◽  
pp. 4722 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kamalakanta Sahoo ◽  
Richard Bergman ◽  
Sevda Alanya-Rosenbaum ◽  
Hongmei Gu ◽  
Shaobo Liang
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Supply Chain ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Forest Management ◽  
New Product Development ◽  
Sustainable Forest Management ◽  
Human Consumption ◽  
Building Products ◽  
Trade Offs

Climate change, environmental degradation, and limited resources are motivations for sustainable forest management. Forests, the most abundant renewable resource on earth, used to make a wide variety of forest-based products for human consumption. To provide a scientific measure of a product’s sustainability and environmental performance, the life cycle assessment (LCA) method is used. This article provides a comprehensive review of environmental performances of forest-based products including traditional building products, emerging (mass-timber) building products and nanomaterials using attributional LCA. Across the supply chain, the product manufacturing life-cycle stage tends to have the largest environmental impacts. However, forest management activities and logistics tend to have the greatest economic impact. In addition, environmental trade-offs exist when regulating emissions as indicated by the latest traditional wood building product LCAs. Interpretation of these LCA results can guide new product development using biomaterials, future (mass) building systems and policy-making on mitigating climate change. Key challenges include handling of uncertainties in the supply chain and complex interactions of environment, material conversion, resource use for product production and quantifying the emissions released.

scholarly journals A critical analysis of the carbon neutrality assumption in life cycle assessment of forest bioenergy systems

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weiguo Liu ◽  
Zhen Yu ◽  
Xinfeng Xie ◽  
Klaus von Gadow ◽  
Changhui Peng
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Life Cycle Assessment ◽  
Life Cycle ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Climate Change Impacts ◽  
Carbon Accounting ◽  
Carbon Neutrality ◽  
Forest Residue ◽  
Assess Climate Change ◽  
Accounting Errors

This study presents a critical analysis regarding the assumption of carbon neutrality in life cycle assessment (LCA) models that assess climate change impacts of bioenergy usage. We identified a complex of problems in the carbon neutrality assumption, especially regarding bioenergy derived from forest residues. In this study, we summarized several issues related to carbon neutral assumptions, with particular emphasis on possible carbon accounting errors at the product level. We analyzed errors in estimating emissions in the supply chain, direct and indirect emissions due to forest residue extraction, biogenic CO2 emission from biomass combustion for energy, and other effects related to forest residue extraction. Various modeling approaches are discussed in detail. We concluded that there is a need to correct accounting errors when estimating climate change impacts and proposed possible remedies. To accurately assess climate change impacts of bioenergy use, greater efforts are required to improve forest carbon cycle modeling, especially to identify and correct pitfalls associated with LCA accounting, forest residue extraction effects on forest fire risk and biodiversity. Uncertainties in accounting carbon emissions in LCA are also highlighted, and associated risks are discussed.

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