The changing nature of life cycle assessment

LCA has evolved from its origins in energy analysis in the 1960s and 70s into a wide ranging tool used to determine impacts of products or systems over several environmental and resource issues. The approach has become more prevalent in research, industry and policy. Its use continues to expand as it seeks to encompass impacts as diverse as resource accounting and social well being. Carbon policy for bioenergy has driven many of these changes.Enabling assessment of complex issues over a life cycle basis is beneficial, but the process is sometimes difficult. LCA's use in framing is increasingly complex and more uncertain, and in some cases, irreconcilable. The charged environment surrounding biofuels and bioenergy exacerbates all of these. Reaching its full potential to help guide difficult policy discussions and emerging research involves successfully managing LCA's transition from attributional to consequential and from retrospective to prospective.This paper examines LCA's on-going evolution and its use within bioenergy deployment. The management of methodological growth in the context of the unique challenges associated with bioenergy and biofuels is explored. Changes seen in bioenergy LCA will bleed into other LCA arenas, especially where it is important that a sustainable solution is chosen.     

Applying resource efficiency principles to the analysis of EU-27 bioenergy options by 2020 – Findings from a recent study for the European Environment Agency

The Renewable Energy Directive sets a target for the European Union (EU) to consume 20% of its final energy from renewable sources by 2020 and further targets are under discussion. EU renewable energy targets will lead to a substantial increase in the demand for bioenergy. As for other sectors, it is important, therefore, to apply the principles of the EU Resource efficiency roadmap to bioenergy production: producing more output with less material input and minimising adverse environmental impacts during the entire production life cycle. This paper uses that concept to analyse the most resource efficient ways for reaching the 2020 bioenergy targets (as set out in National Renewable Energy Action Plans).Scenario analysis with three different storylines is used to model environmental and land use implications plus total bioenergy potential and GHG reductions in 2020 from the agricultural, forest, and waste sectors. These storylines vary in environmental ambition level and economic and political assumptions and explore plausible bioenergy development paths. They show substantial variance in terms of environmental impact and the GHG efficiency between different bioenergy pathways.The modelling shows that under Storyline 1 bioenergy targets of the National Renewable Energy Action Plans would be achieved with CO₂ eq emissions of 44 kg GJ⁻¹, i.e. 62% less GHG emission than if the energy were generated using fossil fuels. In contrast, stricter environmental constraints in Storyline 3 lead to a substantially lower CO₂ eq burden of 25 kg GJ⁻¹, which represents an 80% reduction compared to fossil fuels.     

INDOOR SIMULATION OF A BASIN-TYPE SOLAR STILL

In this paper we develop an applied general equilibrium framework for assessing socio-economic impacts of alternative renewable energy policies and apply it to the bioenergy sector. The policy scenarios are assessed in a comparative static analysis. The numerical simulation results allow us to assess and compare welfare and distributional impacts of alternative renewable energy policies. Our empirical findings suggest that the bioenergy sector in Poland would benefit most from an indirect tax reduction. According to our simulation results, reducing the fossil energy sectors’ subsidies would be the second best policy option.     

Effects of a carbon price in the U.S. on economic sectors,resource use,and emissions: An input–output approach

Despite differences in their implementation, most carbon policies aim to have similar outcomes: effectively raising the price of carbon-intensive products relative to non-carbon-intensive products. While it is possible to predict the simple broad-scale economic impacts of raising the price of carbon-intensive products—the demand for non-carbon-intensive products will increase—understanding the economic and environmental impacts of carbon policies throughout the life cycle of both types of products is more difficult. Using the example of a carbon tax, this study proposes a methodology that integrates short-term policy-induced consumer demand changes into the input–output framework to analyze the environmental and economic repercussions of a policy. Environmental repercussions include the direct and the indirect impacts on emissions, materials flow in the economy, and the reliance on various ecosystem goods and services. The approach combines economic data with data about physical flow of fossil fuels between sectors, consumption of natural resources and emissions from each sector. It applies several input–output modeling equations sequentially and uses various levels of aggregation/disaggregation. It is illustrated with the data for the 2002 U.S. economy and physical flows. The framework provides insight into the short-term complex interactions between carbon price and its economic and environmental effects.     

Environmental and economic appraisal of power generation capacity expansion plan in Nigeria

The power sector in Nigeria is undergoing structural reforms aimed at improving and expanding the current grid generation capacity and distribution network. The Government has injected huge funds into this sector while also granting licences to private companies for the provision of electricity. It is also aiming to increase electricity generation capacity to 25,000 MW by 2020 from the current installed capacity of 6500 MW while also pledging to connect 75% of the population to the grid from the current 40% by 2025. This paper sets out to analyse the implications of the energy policy in Nigeria and presents the life cycle environmental and economic analysis of the current and future electricity sector. The results show that all the life cycle impacts and economic costs increase significantly over the time-period (2003–2030), but at different rates depending on the types of technologies deployed. Renewables such as large hydro and solar proposed by the Government have a potential to reduce the overall life cycle environmental impacts from the electricity mix, considering their lower environmental impacts compared to fossil-fuels. However, this requires a five-fold increase in grid investments from the current US$1.7 billion per year to US$9.40 billion by 2030.     

Hybrid modeling to support energy-climate policy: Effects of feed-in tariffs to promote renewable energy in Portugal

Feed-in tariffs have been the main policy instrument applied in Portugal for the promotion of electricity produced from renewable energy sources under the EU Directives on energy and climate regulation. In this paper, we provide an empirical impact assessment of the economic and environmental effects of Portugal's FITs policy to promote RES-E generation. Impact assessment of policy instruments plays a crucial role on decision-making process. For numerical simulations, we make use of a hybrid top-down/bottom-up general equilibrium modeling approach, which represents a reliable tool to analyze the complex interactions between economic, energy, and environmental issues related to energy policies.Numerical simulations confirm the empirical evidence that the FITs policy implemented by Portugal was both an effective and a cost-efficient way to increase the generation of electricity from renewable energy sources and thus to achieve the national RES-E target of 45% in 2010. Results show relatively modest macroeconomic impacts indicating potentially low economic adjustment costs. From an environmental perspective, the deployment of renewable energy source results in significant carbon emissions reductions.     

How certain are greenhouse gas reductions from bioenergy? Life cycle assessment and uncertainty analysis of wood pellet-to-electricity supply chains from forest residues

Climate change and energy policies often encourage bioenergy as a sustainable greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction option. Recent research has raised concerns about the climate change impacts of bioenergy as heterogeneous pathways of producing and converting biomass, indirect impacts, uncertainties within the bioenergy supply chains and evaluation methods generate large variation in emission profiles. This research examines the combustion of wood pellets from forest residues to generate electricity and considers uncertainties related to GHG emissions arising at different points within the supply chain. Different supply chain pathways were investigated by using life cycle assessment (LCA) to analyse the emissions and sensitivity analysis was used to identify the most significant factors influencing the overall GHG balance. The calculations showed in the best case results in GHG reductions of 83% compared to coal-fired electricity generation. When parameters such as different drying fuels, storage emission, dry matter losses and feedstock market changes were included the bioenergy emission profiles showed strong variation with up to 73% higher GHG emissions compared to coal. The impact of methane emissions during storage has shown to be particularly significant regarding uncertainty and increases in emissions. Investigation and management of losses and emissions during storage is therefore key to ensuring significant GHG reductions from biomass.     

Integrated assessment of bioelectricity technology options

Power generation from biomass is a sustainable energy technology which can contribute to substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, but with greater potential for environmental, economic and social impacts than most other renewable energy technologies. It is important therefore in assessing bioenergy systems to take account of not only technical, but also environmental, economic and social parameters on a common basis. This work addresses the challenge of analysing, quantifying and comparing these factors for bioenergy power generation systems. A life-cycle approach is used to analyse the technical, environmental, economic and social impacts of entire bioelectricity systems, with a number of life-cycle indicators as outputs to facilitate cross-comparison. The results show that similar greenhouse gas savings are achieved with the wide variety of technologies and scales studied, but land-use efficiency of greenhouse gas savings and specific airborne emissions varied substantially. Also, while specific investment costs and electricity costs vary substantially from one system to another the number of jobs created per unit of electricity delivered remains roughly constant. Recorded views of stakeholders illustrate that diverging priorities exist for different stakeholder groups and this will influence appropriate choice of bioenergy systems for different applications.     

Biofuels and their by-products: Global economic and environmental implications

Recently a number of papers have used general equilibrium models to study the economy-wide and environmental consequences of the first generation of biofuels (FGB). In this paper, we argue that nearly all of these studies have overstated the impacts of FGB on global agricultural and land markets due to the fact that they have ignored the role of biofuel by-products. Feed by-products of FGB, such as dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS) and oilseed meals (VOBP), are used in the livestock industry as protein and energy sources. Their presence mitigates the price impacts of biofuel production. More importantly, they reduce the demand for cropland and moderate the indirect land use consequences of FGB.This paper explicitly introduces DDGS and VOBP into a global computational general equilibrium (CGE) model, developed at the Center for Global Trade Analysis at Purdue University, to examine the economic and environmental impacts of regional and international mandate policies designed to stimulate bioenergy production and use. We show that models with and without by-products reveal different portraits of the economic impacts of the US and EU biofuel mandates for the world economy in 2015. While both models demonstrate significant changes in the agricultural production pattern across the world, the model with by-products shows smaller changes in the production of cereal grains and larger changes for oilseeds products in the US and EU, and the reverse for Brazil. Models that omit by-products are found to overstate cropland conversion from US and EU mandates by about 27%.     

LCA of poplar bioenergy system compared with Brassica carinata energy crop and natural gas in regional scenario

The poplar bioenergy system has been analysed applying life cycle assessment (LCA) to compare its environmental performance to: Ethiopian mustard bioenergy system and natural gas. The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) shows that the use of fertilizers is the highest impact in four of the 10 environmental categories, representing between 39% and 67% of the impact in them. The diesel used in transport vehicles and agricultural tractors also has a significant impact in another five of the 10 analysed categories 40–85%. The poplar bioenergy system contributes to global warming with 1.90–1.98 g CO₂ eq MJ^?1 biomass produced. The production and transport as far as the thermoelectric plant of the poplar biomass consumes 0.02 MJ of primary energy per 1 MJ of biomass stored. In comparison with Ethiopian mustard and natural gas, it reduces primary energy consumption by 83% and 89% and the greenhouse gas emission by 84% and 89%, respectively. The results of the analysis support that the poplar bioenergy system is viable from an energy balance and environmental perspective for producing energy in southern Europe, as long as it is cultivated in areas where water is available. This latter point and the better environmental performance of both crops in comparison to natural gas allows us to affirm that the combination of several crops adapted to the local agro-climatic conditions of the territory will be the most suitable strategy in Mediterranean areas that wish to reach the global energy production targets in terms of biomass established by the European Union (EU).     

Policies for the transition towards a hydrogen economy: the EU case

This paper reviews the current EU policy framework in view of its impact on hydrogen and fuel cell development. It screens EU energy policies, EU regulatory policies and EU spending policies. Key questions addressed are as follows: to what extent is the current policy framework conducive to hydrogen and fuel cell development? What barriers and inconsistencies can be identified? How can policies potentially promote hydrogen and fuel cells in Europe, taking into account the complex evolution of such a potentially disruptive technology? How should the EU policy framework be reformed in view of a strengthened and more coherent approach towards full deployment, taking into account recent technology-support activities?     

A participatory systems approach to modeling social, economic, and ecological components of bioenergy

Availability of and access to useful energy is a crucial factor for maintaining and improving human well-being. Looming scarcities and increasing awareness of environmental, economic, and social impacts of conventional sources of non-renewable energy have focused attention on renewable energy sources, including biomass.

The complex interactions of social, economic, and ecological factors among the bioenergy system components of feedstock supply, conversion technology, and energy allocation have been a major obstacle to the broader development of bioenergy systems. For widespread implementation of bioenergy to occur there is a need for an integrated approach to model the social, economic, and ecological interactions associated with bioenergy. Such models can serve as a planning and evaluation tool to help decide when, where, and how bioenergy systems can contribute to development.

One approach to integrated modeling is by assessing the sustainability of a bioenergy system. The evolving nature of sustainability can be described by an adaptive systems approach using general systems principles. Discussing these principles reveals that participation of stakeholders in all components of a bioenergy system is a crucial factor for sustainability.

Multi-criteria analysis (MCA) is an effective tool to implement this approach. This approach would enable decision-makers to evaluate bioenergy systems for sustainability in a participatory, transparent, timely, and informed manner.     

A methodological framework for comparative assessments of equipment energy efficiency policy measures

When government policy-makers propose new policies, they need to assess the costs and benefits of the proposed policy measures to compare them to existing and alternative policies and to rank them according to their effectiveness. In the case of equipment energy efficiency regulations, comparing the effects of a range of alternative policy measures requires evaluating their effects on consumers’ budgets, on national energy consumption and economics, and on the environment. A useful methodology to perform such policy analysis should represent in a single framework the characteristics of each policy measure and provide comparable results. This paper presents an integrated methodological framework for the prospective assessment of the energy, economic, and environmental impacts of a variety of equipment energy efficiency policy measures. The framework is a comparative assessment tool for energy efficiency policy measures that (a) relies on a common set of primary data and parameters; (b) follows a single functional approach to estimate the energy, economic, and emissions savings resulting from each assessed measure; and (c) summarizes results in a set of metrics to facilitate comparative assessments. It provides a general methodology useful for evaluating a broad range of policies to promote greater equipment energy efficiency and the capability to further compare the impacts of such market interventions. The paper concludes with a demonstration of the use of the framework to compare the estimated impacts of 12 policy measures focusing on increasing the energy efficiency of gas furnaces in the USA.     

Macroeconomic impacts of bioenergy production on surplus agricultural land—A case study of Argentina

This paper assesses the macroeconomic impacts in terms of GDP, trade balance and employment of large-scale bioenergy production on surplus agricultural land. An input–output model is developed with which the direct, indirect and induced macroeconomic impacts of bioenergy production and agricultural intensification, which is needed to make agricultural land become available for bioenergy production, are assessed following a scenario approach. The methodology is applied to a case study of Argentina. The results of this study reveal that large-scale pellet production in 2015 would directly increase GDP by 4%, imports by 10% and employment by 6% over the reference situation in 2001. When accounting for indirect and induced impacts, GDP increases by 18%, imports by 20% and employment by 26% compared to 2001. Agricultural intensification reduces but does not negate these positive impacts of bioenergy production. Accounting for agricultural intensification, the increase in GDP as a result of bioenergy production on surplus agricultural land would amount to 16%, 20% in imports and 16% in employment compared to 2001.     

Environmental,social, and economic assessment of energy utilization of crop residue in China

This paper aims to discuss an environmental, social, and economic analysis of energy utilization of crop residues from life cycle perspectives in China. The methodologies employed to achieve this objective are environmental life cycle assessment (E-LCA), life cycle cost (LCC), and social life cycle assessment (S-LCA). Five scenarios are developed based on the conversion technologies and final bioenergy products. The system boundaries include crop residue collection, transportation, pre-treatment, and conversion process. The replaced amounts of energy are also taken into account in the E-LCA analysis. The functional unit is defined as 1 MJ of energy produced. Eight impact categories are considered besides climate change in E-LCA. The investment capital cost and salary cost are collected and compared in the life cycle of the scenarios. Three stakeholders and several subcategories are considered in the S-LCA analysis defined by UNEP/SETAS guidelines. The results show that the energy utilization of crop residue has carbon emission factors of 0.09–0.18 kg (CO₂ eq per 1 MJ), and presents a net carbon emissions reduction of 0.03–0.15 kg (CO₂ eq per 1 MJ) compared with the convectional electricity or petrol, but the other impacts should be paid attention to in the biomass energy scenarios. The energy utilization of crop residues can bring economic benefit to local communities and the society, but the working conditions of local workers need to be improved in future biomass energy development.     

Impacts of policy means for increased use of forest-based bioenergy in Norway—A spatial partial equilibrium analysis

Like the European Union (EU), Norway has defined quite ambitious targets regarding increased use of bioenergy. However, the bioenergy market develops relatively slowly, and stronger policies seem necessary to reach the targets. This study analyses how different policy means, high on the agenda in the Norwegian energy debate, may affect the use of forest-based bioenergy in Norway. The means studied are (i) subsidies reducing investment costs of district heating installations, (ii) deposit grant for replacement of oil burners with burners based on bioenergy (iii) feed-in supporting energy production in district heating based on bioenergy. The study is based on a regionalised partial equilibrium model covering forestry, forest industries and the bioenergy sector. The advantage of this methodology is that it allows for assessments of the economic potential of bioenergy under different policy alternatives, taking into account the competition for raw materials from the forest industries, regional differences regarding heat demand and wood fibre supply, as well as important spatial aspects connected to inter-regional transport and trade of wood.

The results of the study give medium-term projections for bioenergy use in Norway under different bioenergy policy regimes. Some investments in bioburners in central heating systems and new district heating based on bioenergy are profitable at the current energy prices, but policy incentives in terms of grants, subsidies or feed-in systems make it possible to overcome inertia in investments decisions and provide substantial increase in the supply of bioenergy. The results show that the analysed policy means are effective at the current energy price levels and have a significant impact on bioenergy production. While some results are specific to Norway, other results and the methodology used are of more general value also to other European countries.     

Ecological assessment of integrated bioenergy systems using the Sustainable Process Index

Biomass utilisation for energy production presently faces an uphill battle against fossil fuels. The use of biomass must offer additional benefits to compensate for higher prices: on the basis of a life cycle assessment (using BEAM to evaluate a variety of integrated bioenergy systems in connection with the Sustainable Process Index as a highly aggregated environmental pressure index) it is shown that integrated bioenergy systems are superior to fossil fuel systems in terms of environmental compatibility. The implementation of sustainability measures provides additional valuable information that might help in constructing and optimising integrated bioenergy systems. For a set of reference processes, among them fast pyrolysis, atmospheric gasification, integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC), combustion and steam cycle (CS) and conventional hydrolysis, a detailed impact assessment is shown. Sensitivity analyses of the most important ecological parameters are calculated, giving an overview of the impacts of various stages in the total life cycle and showing ‘what really matters’. Much of the ecological impact of integrated bioenergy systems is induced by feedstock production. It is mainly the use of fossil fuels in cultivation, harvesting and transportation as well as the use of fertilisers in short-rotation coppice production that impose considerable ecological pressure. Concerning electricity generation the most problematic pressures are due to gaseous emissions, most notably the release of NO_x. Moreover, a rather complicated process (high amount of grey energy) and the use of fossil pilot fuel (co-combustion) leads to a rather weak ecological performance in contrast to other 100% biomass-based systems.     

How to ensure greenhouse gas emission reductions by increasing the use of biofuels? - Suitability of the European Union sustainability criteria

Biofuels are promoted in many parts of the world. However, concern of environmental and social problems have grown due to increased production of biofuels. Therefore, many initiatives for sustainability criteria have been announced. As a part of the European Union (EU) renewable energy promotion directive (RED), the EU has introduced greenhouse gas (GHG) emission-saving requirements for biofuels along with the first-ever mandate methodology to calculate the GHG emission reduction. As explored in this paper, the RED methodology, based on life-cycle assessment (LCA) approach, excludes many critical issues. These include indirect impacts due to competition for land, biomass and other auxiliary inputs. Also, timing issues, allocation problems, and uncertainty of individual parameters are not yet considered adequately. Moreover, the default values provided in the RED for the GHG balances of biofuels may significantly underestimate their actual impacts. We conclude that the RED methodology cannot ensure the intended GHG emission reductions of biofuels. Instead, a more comprehensive approach is required along with additional data and indicators. Even if it may be very difficult to verify the GHG emission reductions of biofuels in practice, it is necessary to consider the uncertainties more closely, in order to mitigate climate change effectively.     

Fuel cells for non-automotive uses: Status and prospects

Fuel cells are in varying stages of commercialization for both automotive and non-automotive applications. The fuel cell industry has made substantial progress but still needs to reduce costs and improve performance to compete successfully with established technologies. In just 5 years, costs have been reduced by a factor of two while improving efficiency and durability. Based on interviews with fuel cell manufacturers in the U.S., Japan and the EU and information from published sources, a model of non-automotive fuel cell markets is constructed and used to estimate the impacts of government policies and to project the potential evolution of the industry to 2025. The model includes the effects of learning-by-doing, scale economies and exogenous technological progress on component and system costs, estimates customer choices between fuel cell and competing established technologies, and attempts to measure the impacts of government policies. With continued policy support it appears likely that the industry can become self-sustaining within the next decade.     

Creating a level playing field? The concentration and centralisation of emissions in the European Union Emissions Trading System

This article questions the assumption that carbon markets create a level playing field by exploring the relationship between the organisation of capital and the organisation of emissions in the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS). It constructs a database by matching installations and owners to reveal that a relatively small number of large-scale coal-fired power stations, owned by a very small group of states and corporations, are responsible for a significant proportion of greenhouse gas emissions. The findings are analysed by considering how technological dependence on coal together with the corporate institutional form combine to support the socio-spatial concentration and centralisation of capital and emissions. Case studies of the consolidation of the seven largest polluting owners from Europe's coal-dependent electricity sector and the carbon trading strategies of the two largest polluters, RWE and E.ON, then assess the impacts of energy liberalisation and emissions trading policies. The article concludes that EU energy and climate policies are pulling in different directions by clustering responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions and diffusing responsibility to address climate change. The uneven distribution of emissions within the EU ETS makes an alternative policy approach that directly targets the biggest corporate and state polluters both feasible and necessary.