Iso 14040 Series Life Cycle Assessment
The international standardisation of Environmental Management (EM) is documented by the ISO 14000 series. Within this series a number of Environmental Management tools are treated. Therefore, it can be seen as a ‘toolbox’ which offers several options for sound Environmental Management practices in organisations. However, a number of questions remain because they are not treated by the standards themselves. Some examples are, which of the tools should be applied to what kind of Environmental Management problem or what are the synergisms and antagonisms between these tools. To illustrate the importance of a comprehensive choice and a compatible approach towards EM-tools, Life-Cycle-Assessment (ISO 14040 series) is discussed in the context of Environmental Management Systems (ISO 14001).
The focus of ISO 14001 are organisations, while LCA deals with products or processes. In principle, they are not compatible, as the life-cycle approach analyses one production chain from ‘cradle to grave’ or even back to the cradle, while a management system according to ISO 14001 analyses a number of product chains from ‘gate to gate’. However, LCAs could be compiled by aggregating several ‘gate to gate’ energy and material balances of companies.
LCA can assist in prioritising and achieving the objectives of an EM-System. LCA can also help to understand the environmental impact of organisations and what share of their overall environmental burden is produced ‘inside the gates’ respectively ‘outside the gates’.
Illustration of the general phases of a life-cycle assessment, as described by the ISO. Contents.Definition, synonyms, goals, and purpose Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is sometimes referred to synonymously as life-cycle analysis in the scholarly and agency report literatures. It is also sometimes referred to as 'cradle-to-grave analysis'. This section needs expansion with: a better, source based description of this presentation of the LCA process, and how it compares to other presentations of the process. You can help.
( December 2019)According to standards in the ISO 14040 and 14044, an LCA is carried out in four distinct phasesas illustrated in the figure shown at the above right (at opening of the article). The phases are often interdependent, in that the results of one phase will inform how other phases are completed. Goal and scope. This section needs expansion with: equivalent description of each of the 'technical detail' bullets, based on a secondary literature citation. You can help.
( December 2019)An LCA starts with an explicit statement of the goal and scope of the study, which sets out the context of the study and explains how and to whom the results are to be communicated. This is a key step and the ISO standards require that the goal and scope of an LCA be clearly defined and consistent with the intended application. This is an example of a Life-cycle inventory (LCI) diagramLife Cycle Inventory (LCI) analysis involves creating an inventory of flows from and to nature for a product system. Inventory flows include inputs of water, energy, and raw materials, and releases to air, land, and water. To develop the inventory, a flow model of the technical system is constructed using data on inputs and outputs. The flow model is typically illustrated with a flow chart that includes the activities that are going to be assessed in the relevant supply chain and gives a clear picture of the technical system boundaries. The input and output data needed for the construction of the model are collected for all activities within the system boundary, including from the supply chain (referred to as inputs from the technosphere).
The data must be related to the functional unit defined in the goal and scope definition. Data can be presented in tables and some interpretations can be made already at this stage.
The results of the inventory is an LCI which provides information about all inputs and outputs in the form of elementary flow to and from the environment from all the unit processes involved in the study. Inventory flows can number in the hundreds depending on the system boundary. For product LCAs at either the generic (i.e., representative industry averages) or brand-specific level, that data is typically collected through survey questionnaires. At an industry level, care has to be taken to ensure that questionnaires are completed by a representative sample of producers, leaning toward neither the best nor the worst, and fully representing any regional differences due to energy use, material sourcing or other factors. The questionnaires cover the full range of inputs and outputs, typically aiming to account for 99% of the mass of a product, 99% of the energy used in its production and any environmentally sensitive flows, even if they fall within the 1% level of inputs. One area where data access is likely to be difficult is flows from the technosphere.
The technosphere is more simply defined as the human-made world. Considered by geologists as secondary resources, these resources are in theory 100% recyclable; however, in a practical sense, the primary goal is salvage. For an LCI, these technosphere products (supply chain products) are those that have been produced by human and unfortunately those completing a questionnaire about a process which uses a human-made product as a means to an end will be unable to specify how much of a given input they use. Typically, they will not have access to data concerning inputs and outputs for previous production processes of the product. The entity undertaking the LCA must then turn to secondary sources if it does not already have that data from its own previous studies.
National databases or data sets that come with LCA-practitioner tools, or that can be readily accessed, are the usual sources for that information. Care must then be taken to ensure that the secondary data source properly reflects regional or national conditions. LCI methods include 'process LCAs', economic input–output LCA and hybrid approaches. Impact assessment. This section does not any.
Unsourced material may be challenged and.Find sources: – ( December 2019) Inventory analysis is followed by a life-cyle impact assessment (LCIA). This phase of LCA is aimed at evaluating the significance of potential environmental impacts based on the life-cycle impact flow results. Classical LCIAs consist of the following mandatory elements:.
selection of impact categories, category indicators, and characterization models;. the classification stage, where the inventory parameters are sorted and assigned to specific impact categories; and. impact measurement, where the categorized LCI flows are characterized, using one of many possible LCIA methodologies, into common equivalence units that are then summed to provide an overall impact category total. In many LCAs, characterization concludes the LCIA analysisit is the last compulsory stage according to ISO 14044. However, in addition to the above mandatory LCIA steps, other optional LCIA elements–, grouping, and weighting–may be conducted depending on the goal and scope of the LCA study.
In normalization, the results of the impact categories from the study are usually compared with the total impacts in the region of interest, e.g., the United States. consists of sorting and possibly the impact categories. During, the different environmental impacts are weighted relative to each other so that they can then be summed to get a single number for the total environmental impact. ISO 14044 generally advises against weighting, stating that 'weighting, shall not be used in LCA studies intended to be used in comparative assertions intended to be disclosed to the public'.
This advice is often ignored, resulting in comparisons that can reflect a high degree of subjectivity as a result of weighting. Life cycle impacts can also be categorized under the several phases of the development, production, use, and disposal of a product. Broadly speaking, these impacts can be divided into first impacts, use impacts, and end of life impacts. First impacts include extraction of raw materials, manufacturing (conversion of raw materials into a product), transportation of the product to a market or site, construction/installation, and the beginning of the use or occupancy.
Use impacts include physical impacts of operating the product or facility (such as energy, water, etc.), and any maintenance, renovation, or repairs that are required to continue to use the product or facility. End of life impacts include demolition and processing of waste or recyclable materials. Interpretation Life-cycle interpretation is a systematic technique to identify, quantify, check, and evaluate information from the results of the life cycle inventory and/or the life cycle impact assessment. The results from the inventory analysis and impact assessment are summarized during the interpretation phase. The outcome of the interpretation phase is a set of conclusions and recommendations for the study.
According to ISO 14040the interpretation should include:. identification of significant issues based on the results of the LCI and LCIA phases of an LCA;. evaluation of the study considering completeness, sensitivity and consistency checks; and.
conclusions, limitations and recommendations. A key purpose of performing life cycle interpretation is to determine the level of confidence in the final results and communicate them in a fair, complete, and accurate manner. Interpreting the results of an LCA is not as simple as '3 is better than 2, therefore Alternative A is the best choice'. Interpretation begins with understanding the accuracy of the results, and ensuring they meet the goal of the study. This is accomplished by identifying the data elements that contribute significantly to each impact category, of these significant data elements, assessing the completeness and consistency of the study, and drawing conclusions and recommendations based on a clear understanding of how the LCA was conducted and the results were developed. Specifically, as voiced by M.A. Curran, the goal of the LCA interpretation phase is to identify the alternative that has the least cradle-to-grave environmental negative impact on land, sea, and air resources.
LCA uses. This article needs attention from an expert in Environment. The specific problem is: to update the 2006 authoritative summary of uses, and to sift through the remaining weak description and example selections, to provide an encyclopedic summary of important applications based on the secondary literature. May be able to help recruit an expert. See also:Cradle-to-cradle is a specific kind of cradle-to-grave assessment, where the end-of-life disposal step for the product is a process. It is a method used to minimize the environmental impact of products by employing sustainable production, operation, and disposal practices and aims to incorporate social responsibility into product development. From the recycling process originate new, identical products (e.g., asphalt pavement from discarded asphalt pavement, glass bottles from collected glass bottles), or different products (e.g., glass wool insulation from collected glass bottles).
Allocation of burden for products in open loop production systems presents considerable challenges for LCA. Various methods, such as the approach have been proposed to deal with the issues involved.
Gate-to-gate Gate-to-gate is a partial LCA looking at only one value-added process in the entire production chain. Gate-to-gate modules may also later be linked in their appropriate production chain to form a complete cradle-to-gate evaluation. Well-to-wheel Well-to-wheel is the specific LCA used for and vehicles. The analysis is often broken down into stages entitled 'well-to-station', or 'well-to-tank', and 'station-to-wheel' or 'tank-to-wheel', or 'plug-to-wheel'. The first stage, which incorporates the feedstock or fuel production and processing and fuel delivery or energy transmission, and is called the 'upstream' stage, while the stage that deals with vehicle operation itself is sometimes called the 'downstream' stage. The well-to-wheel analysis is commonly used to assess total energy consumption, or the and impact of, and, including their, and the fuels used in each of these transport modes. WtW analysis is useful for reflecting the different efficiencies and emissions of energy technologies and fuels at both the upstream and downstream stages, giving a more complete picture of real emissions.
The well-to-wheel variant has a significant input on a model developed by the. The was developed to evaluate the impacts of new fuels and vehicle technologies. The model evaluates the impacts of fuel use using a well-to-wheel evaluation while a traditional cradle-to-grave approach is used to determine the impacts from the vehicle itself.
The model reports energy use, and six additional pollutants: (VOCs), (CO), (NOx), with size smaller than 10 micrometre (PM10), particulate matter with size smaller than 2.5 micrometre (PM2.5), and (SOx).Quantitative values of emissions calculated with the WTW or with the LCA method can differ, since the LCA is considering more emission sources. In example, while assessing the GHG emissions of a in comparison with a conventional internal combustion engine vehicle, the WTW (accounting only the GHG for manufacturing the fuels) finds out that an electric vehicle can save the 50-60% of GHG, while an hybrid LCA-WTW method, considering also the GHG due to the manufacturing and the end of life of the battery gives GHG emission savings 10-13% lower, compared to the WTW. Economic input–output life cycle assessment Economic input–output LCA involves use of aggregate sector-level data on how much environmental impact can be attributed to each sector of the economy and how much each sector purchases from other sectors. Such analysis can account for long chains (for example, building an automobile requires energy, but producing energy requires vehicles, and building those vehicles requires energy, etc.), which somewhat alleviates the scoping problem of process LCA; however, EIOLCA relies on sector-level averages that may or may not be representative of the specific subset of the sector relevant to a particular product and therefore is not suitable for evaluating the environmental impacts of products. Additionally the translation of economic quantities into environmental impacts is not validated. Ecologically based LCA While a conventional LCA uses many of the same approaches and strategies as an Eco-LCA, the latter considers a much broader range of ecological impacts.
It was designed to provide a guide to wise management of human activities by understanding the direct and indirect impacts on ecological resources and surrounding ecosystems. Developed by Ohio State University Center for resilience, Eco-LCA is a methodology that quantitatively takes into account regulating and supporting services during the life cycle of economic goods and products.
In this approach services are categorized in four main groups: supporting, regulating, provisioning and cultural services. Exergy-based LCA of a system is the maximum useful work possible during a process that brings the system into equilibrium with a heat reservoir. Wall clearly states the relation between exergy analysis and resource accounting. This intuition confirmed by DeWulf and Sciubba lead to Exergo-economic accounting and to methods specifically dedicated to LCA such as Exergetic material input per unit of service (EMIPS). The concept of material input per unit of service (MIPS) is quantified in terms of the second law of thermodynamics, allowing the calculation of both resource input and service output in exergy terms. This exergetic material input per unit of service (EMIPS) has been elaborated for transport technology.
The service not only takes into account the total mass to be transported and the total distance, but also the mass per single transport and the delivery time. Life cycle energy analysis.
Further information:It is recognized that much energy is lost in the production of energy commodities themselves, such as,or high-quality. Net energy content is the energy content of the product minus energy input usedduring extraction and, directly or indirectly. A controversial early result of LCEA claimed that manufacturingrequires more energy than can be recovered in using the solar cell. The result was refuted. Another new concept that flows from life cycle assessments is. Energy cannibalism refers to an effect where rapid growth of an entire energy-intensive industry creates a need for that uses (or cannibalizes) the energy of existing power plants. Thus during rapid growth the industry as a whole produces no energy because new energy is used to fuel the of future power plants.
Work has been undertaken in the UK to determine the life cycle energy (alongside full LCA) impacts of a number of renewable technologies. Energy recovery. Further information:If materials are incinerated during the disposal process, the energy released during burning can be harnessed and used for. This provides a low-impact energy source, especially when compared with and natural gas While produces more emissions than, the waste plants are well-fitted with filters to minimize this negative impact. A recent study comparing energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from landfills (without energy recovery) against incineration (with energy recovery) found incineration to be superior in all cases except for when is recovered for electricity production.
Criticism Energy efficiency is arguably only one consideration in deciding which alternative process to employ, and should not be elevated as the only criterion for determining environmental acceptability. For example, a simple energy analysis does not take into account the renewability of energy flows or the toxicity of waste products. Incorporating 'dynamic LCAs', e.g., with regard to renewable energy technologies—which use sensitivity analyses to project future improvements in renewable systems and their share of the power grid—may help mitigate this criticism. In recent years, the literature on life cycle assessment of has begun to reflect the interactions between the current and future.
Some papers have focused on life cycle, while others have focused on (CO 2) and other. The essential critique given by these sources is that when considering, the growing nature of the power grid must be taken into consideration.
Life Cycle Assessment Example
If this is not done, a given class may emit more CO 2 over its lifetime than it initially thought it would mitigate, with this most well.A problem that energy analysis method cannot resolve is that different energy forms—, etc.—have different quality and value as a consequence of the two main laws of. According to the, all energy inputs should be accounted with equal weight, whereas by the, diverse energy forms should be accounted for using different values. The conflict may be resolved in one of several ways: the value differences between the energy inputs might be ignored, a value ratio may be arbitrarily assigned (e.g., that an input of is 2.6-times more valuable than a joule of heat or fuel), the analysis may be supplemented by economic/, or, a thermodynamic measure of the quality of energymay be used as the metric for the LCA (instead of energy). Critiques Life cycle assessment is a powerful tool for analyzing aspects of quantifiable systems. Not every factor, however, can be reduced to a number and inserted into a model. Rigid system boundaries make accounting for changes in the system difficult.
This is sometimes referred to as the to. The accuracy and availability of data can also contribute to inaccuracy. For instance, data from generic processes may be based on, or outdated results. Additionally, social implications of products are generally lacking in LCAs. Comparative life-cycle analysis is often used to determine a better process or product to use. However, because of aspects like differing system boundaries, different statistical information, different product uses, etc., these studies can easily be swayed in favor of one product or process over another in one study and the opposite in another study based on varying parameters and different available data.
There are guidelines to help reduce such conflicts in results but the method still provides a lot of room for the researcher to decide what is important, how the product is typically manufactured, and how it is typically used. An in-depth review of 13 LCA studies of wood and paper products found a lack of consistency in the methods and assumptions used to track carbon during the. A wide variety of methods and assumptions were used, leading to different and potentially contrary conclusions – particularly with regard to and in landfills and with during forest growth and product use.
Iso 14040 2006 Pdf
See also.