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Regionalized life cycle assessment: computational methodology and application to inventory databases.

Christopher L Mutel¹, Stefanie Hellweg

¹ETH Zurich, Institute of Environmental Engineering, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland. mutel@ifu.baug.ethz.ch

Environmental Science & Technology

|September 8, 2009

Summary

Site-dependent life cycle assessment (LCA) provides realistic environmental impacts. A new methodology integrates regionalized factors into LCA databases, enabling detailed geographic impact assessments and revealing varied environmental outcomes.

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Area of Science:

Environmental Science
Industrial Ecology

Background:

Site-dependent impact assessment in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) offers superior accuracy for categories like acidification and eutrophication compared to generic assessments.
Existing regionalized impact assessment factors have not been widely integrated into LCA databases and software.

Purpose of the Study:

To develop and present a simple, generic methodology for coupling regionalized characterization factors with large life cycle inventory databases.
To enable detailed, geographically specific life cycle impact assessment results.

Main Methods:

Coupling existing regionalized characterization factors with large life cycle inventory databases.
Applying the methodology to calculate European country-specific electricity mixes using the Ecoinvent 2.01 database.
Utilizing EDIP 2003 and Accumulated Exceedance impact assessment methods and CASES project external energy cost factors.

Main Results:

Regionalization revealed different total environmental scores and identified varying key processes contributing to impacts.
Geographic distribution of environmental impacts differed significantly across European countries for electricity mixes.
The methodology demonstrated its capability to provide detailed geographic life cycle impact assessment results.

Conclusions:

The developed methodology allows for routine, detailed geographic life cycle impact assessment without requiring additional input beyond existing LCA database information.
Improved and consistent geographic data in LCA databases and impact assessment methods are crucial for accurate, spatially relevant environmental effect analysis.
Regionalized impact assessment significantly enhances the realism and utility of LCA studies.