Climate impacts of land use in LCA : elaboration of criteria for satisfactory methods
INTRODUCTION LCA is a widely used tool for assessing the environmental impacts of products. However, despite the large importance of land use for atmospheric CO2-levels there is still no consensus on how to include the climate impact of land use in LCA and results vary up to several hundred percent...
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| Formato: | H2 |
| Lenguaje: | Inglés sueco |
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SLU/Dept. of Energy and Technology
2015
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| Sumario: | INTRODUCTION
LCA is a widely used tool for assessing the environmental impacts of products. However, despite the large importance of land use for atmospheric CO2-levels there is still no consensus on how to include the climate impact of land use in LCA and results vary up to several hundred percent depending on method.
The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to a formation of consensus about how to handle the climate impact of land use in LCA by suggesting criteria for satisfactory methods to do this. The criteria are meant to limit the number of alternative methods and the variation in results.
METHOD
The criteria are elaborated through theoretical reasoning that takes its points of departure in the definitions of essential terms and in assumptions of desired properties for LCA such as internal consistency, comprehensiveness (the property of being all-inclusive) and comprehensibility (the property of being easy to understand).
RESULTS
The analysis resulted in 11 criteria. One effect of the criteria is that when one makes assumptions of land use changes and use GWPs to aggregate emissions, then the impact of the change should be distributed over all the services that are derived during the new use up to the GWP time horizon. Other criteria concern the need to consider e.g. albedo, aerosol formation and impacts on the ability of the used land to provide services. Yet other criteria is about that an LCA should enable readers to understand the potential trade-offs between short and long term climate impacts.
DISCUSSION
The criteria may be used to evaluate and improve suggested methods, as guidance in design of new methods and to point out research and development needs (e.g. concerning the inclusion of normally ignored climate forcers such as albedo and aerosol formation). Many used and suggested methods are inconsistent and adjustments according to the suggested criteria are likely to decrease the variation in results between methods. There is a need to evaluate the reliability of previous LCA studies and there could be a need to reconsider conclusions based on LCA that do not include climate impacts of land use in a satisfactory way. There is also a need to refine the suggested criteria and/or elaborate more specific standards for specific contexts. |
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