Implications of energy policy on a product system's dynamic life-cycle environmental impact: Survey and model

Successfully developing and manufacturing industrial products requires considering the economic- and environmental-factors that span multiple spatial- and temporal-scales. Here, we propose an integrated approach combining an energy-economic model with a life-cycle assessment to analyze the impacts of energy policies on the dynamic changes in the various environmental impacts of a product system. We employ the Market Allocation (MARKAL) framework to foresee the changes in several economic- and technological-parameters over specific periods for different energy policies. Furthermore, we create a dynamic life-cycle inventory database to assess the changes in the future life-cycle environmental impact of a current product/process system. Our proposed method may guide industry to proactively prepare for the possible effects of different energy policies on their current product/process system's environmental profile so that they can make strategic decisions on modifications to, and investments in their production processes thereby to enhance their environmental- and economic-performance while meeting the various emission-abatement targets.