Life Cycle Assessment (LCA): Connections with Sustainability Scott Matthews Green Design Institute

Agenda Pre-Assessment Sustainability’s Place in LCA Intro to LCA

Links to Sustainability This course is 3rd of 4th courses in CEE “Sustainability” sequence –Intro to Sustainable Engineering (Fall) –Industrial Ecology (Fall) –LCA (Spring) –Case Studies in Sust. Engineering (Spring) Most of you have taken first 1-2 courses All of you are prepared for this course

Why LCA? In “meeting needs of present without compromising our ability to meet future needs”, we are faced with some obstacles –Corporate and social pressures –Governmental/regulatory barriers –Uncertain objectives/goals –Lack of tools to measure our progress Sometimes our intuition is not a sufficient framework for analysis

Definitions A life cycle of a product (a.k.a. “cradle to grave”) begins with raw materials production and extends to manufacture, use, transport, and disposition LCA is “a technique for assessing the environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product, process, or system by”: –Setting goals and scope of study –Compiling an inventory of inputs / outputs –Evaluating potential impacts of those –Interpreting result of the inventory and impact assessment in context of study objectives –Suggesting improvements for future benefit

What is LCA? LCA is not a cure-all for our environmental problems LCA is a way of structuring/organizing the relevant parts of the life cycle It is a tool to track performance

Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) A concept and methodology to evaluate the environmental effects of a product or activity holistically, by analyzing the whole life cycle of a particular product, process, or activity (U.S. EPA, 1993). LCA studies analyze the environmental aspects and potential impacts throughout a product's life cycle (e.g., cradle-to-grave) from raw material acquisition through production, use and disposal (ISO). MiningDisposal Use/ Operation Manuf. Reuse Recycling Reuse Waste

Stages of the Product Life Cycle Source: U.S. EPA

Quick Example In early 1990s, California had a policy goal of reducing emissions of air pollution by encouraging the adoption of ‘zero emission vehicles (ZEVs)’ into 2% of the fleet by year 1998 (10% in 2003). –These vehicles were fully battery-powered –These vehicles had no tailpipes A study in Science by Lave et al (1995) suggested this policy would not achieve its intended goals What were the problems?

Example - Answers Cars fully powered by batteries –Batteries of this type need to be recharged –Recharging happens with electricity –Electricity production has air emissions! Also - at the time, batteries were lead-acid –Large batteries for battery-only power –Large amounts of lead needed (with significant manufacture/recycling emissions of lead) –More lead released than without ZEVs! A Life Cycle Assessment framework if adopted would have pointed out these issues.

History of LCA Note: Life Cycle Cost Analysis is a subset –Cost focused: big factor in infrastructure management Initial LCA work was focused on energy first multi-criteria study for Coca-Cola –Choice between glass and plastic for container –Choice between internal / external container production –End of life options (recycling or one-way) –Result: plastic bottle was best, contrary to expectations. –Study was never published –Questions of validity then occurred –Led to calls by scientific community for a standardisation process

History (cont.) Early 1990s: US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Society for Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC), etc : International Organization for Standardization (ISO) documents –A piece of global “EMS standard” –First international LCA ‘standard’ Look over these documents on web site!

Current State of the Art Most “LCAs” end at the inventory stage These studies yield ‘results’ that are a laundry list of emissions, energy, etc. The impact assessment stage is still being developed, validated, and tested globally Given that, how do we currently translate these inventories into a practical answer?

Next Class Assignment Read First 2 ISO Framework documents (PDFs) posted on website –Note #1 is very similar to reading from EPA (for today) - probably can skim. –#2 is fairly different