Cumulative Energy Demand As Predictor for the Environmental Burden of Commodity Production

Huijbregts, Mark A. J.; Hellweg, Stefanie; Frischknecht, Rolf; Hendriks, Harrie; Hungerbühler, Konrad; Hendriks, A. Jan

doi:10.1021/es902870s

Cited by 356 publications

(173 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Impact assessment was done using the methods Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) v. 1.08 [29,51] (unit: MJ), and Global Warming Potential (GWP) [29,52] (unit: carbon dioxide equivalents, CO 2 eq. ), as implemented in SimaPro [36].…”

Section: Environmental Impact Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

A material selection approach to evaluate material substitution for minimizing the life cycle environmental impact of vehicles

et al. 2015

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Weight reduction is commonly adopted in vehicle design as a means for energy and emissions savings. However, selection of lightweight materials is often focused on performance characteristics, which may lead to sub optimizations of life cycle environmental impact. Therefore systematic material selection processes are needed that integrate weight optimization and environmental life cycle assessment. This paper presents such an approach and its application to design of an automotive component. Materials from the metal, hybrid and polymer families were assessed, along with a novel self-reinforced composite material that is a potential lightweight alternative to nonrecyclable composites. It was shown that materials offering the highest weight saving potential offer limited life cycle environmental benefit due to energy demanding manufacturing. Selection of the preferable alternative is not a straightforward process since results may be sensitive to critical but uncertain aspects of the life cycle. Such aspects need to be evaluated to determine the actual benefits of lightweight design and to base material selection on more informed choices.

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Section: Environmental Impact Assessmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

A material selection approach to evaluate material substitution for minimizing the life cycle environmental impact of vehicles

et al. 2015

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“…While carbon footprint is undoubtedly of high environmental relevance and gives a first important insight into the impact of nutrition on the environment, it is clearly insufficient to describe the full range of environmental impacts of food systems. Some studies assess the use of fossil energy only, which was found to be a good indicator for the total environmental impact in general, but notably with the main exception of agricultural products (Huijbregts et al 2010). Agricultural production has a number of environmental impacts not related to fossil energy use or climate impacts.…”

Section: Challenges For the Environmental Assessment Of Nutritionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Environmental impacts of food consumption and nutrition: where are we and what is next?

Nemecek

Jungbluth

Canals³

et al. 2016

Int J Life Cycle Assess

164

106

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Purpose This article introduces the special issue "LCA of nutrition and food consumption" and 14 papers selected from the Ninth LCA Food Conference in San Francisco in October 2014. Literature overview The scientific literature in the field of food LCA has increased more than ten times during the last 15 years. Nutrition has a high contribution to the total environmental impacts of consumption. Agricultural production often dominates the impacts, but its importance depends on the type of product, its production mode, transport, and processing. Local or domestic products reduce transports, but this advantage can be lost if the impacts of the raw material production are substantially increased. Diets containing less meat tend to be more environmentally friendly. Several studies concluded that respecting the dietary recommendations for a healthy diet would reduce the overall environmental impacts in the developed countries, although this is not a universal conclusion. Contribution of this special issueEight papers analyze the environmental impacts of catering and in-house food consumption and impacts on sectoral and national levels; four papers presents tools and methods to better assess the impacts of nutrition and to implement the results in practical decisionmaking. Finally, two contributions analyze the impacts of food waste and reduction options. Communication of the environmental impact assessment results to stakeholders including policy-makers and consumers needs additional efforts. Research needs and outlook (i) Development of holistic approaches for the assessment of sustainable food systems, (ii) assessment of land use related impacts and inclusion of ecosystem services, (iii) exploration of LCA results for policy support and decision-making, (iv) investigation of food consumption patterns in developing and emerging countries, and (v) harmonization of databases.

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“…We conducted an integrated assessment of the net environmental benefits of this transition in WWTPs for more than 50 individual countries to determine how best to update current methods of wastewater treatment and facilitate sustainable WWTPs in various parts of the world. impacts on the environment (16)(17)(18)(19). However, there is increasing recognition that EPMs alone are insufficient.…”

Section: Significancementioning

confidence: 99%

Probabilistic evaluation of integrating resource recovery into wastewater treatment to improve environmental sustainability

Wang

McCarty

Liu

et al. 2015

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Global expectations for wastewater service infrastructure have evolved over time, and the standard treatment methods used by wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are facing issues related to problem shifting due to the current emphasis on sustainability. A transition in WWTPs toward reuse of wastewater-derived resources is recognized as a promising solution for overcoming these obstacles. However, it remains uncertain whether this approach can reduce the environmental footprint of WWTPs. To test this hypothesis, we conducted a net environmental benefit calculation for several scenarios for more than 50 individual countries over a 20-y time frame. For developed countries, the resource recovery approach resulted in ∼154% net increase in the environmental performance of WWTPs compared with the traditional substance elimination approach, whereas this value decreased to ∼60% for developing countries. Subsequently, we conducted a probabilistic analysis integrating these estimates with national values and determined that, if this transition was attempted for WWTPs in developed countries, it would have a ∼65% probability of attaining net environmental benefits. However, this estimate decreased greatly to ∼10% for developing countries, implying a substantial risk of failure. These results suggest that implementation of this transition for WWTPs should be studied carefully in different temporal and spatial contexts. Developing countries should customize their approach to realizing more sustainable WWTPs, rather than attempting to simply replicate the successful models of developed countries. Results derived from the model forecasting highlight the role of bioenergy generation and reduced use of chemicals in improving the sustainability of WWTPs in developing countries.wastewater treatment | paradigm shift | resource recovery | sustainability assessment | net environmental benefit

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Cumulative Energy Demand As Predictor for the Environmental Burden of Commodity Production

Cited by 356 publications

References 33 publications

A material selection approach to evaluate material substitution for minimizing the life cycle environmental impact of vehicles

A material selection approach to evaluate material substitution for minimizing the life cycle environmental impact of vehicles

Environmental impacts of food consumption and nutrition: where are we and what is next?

Probabilistic evaluation of integrating resource recovery into wastewater treatment to improve environmental sustainability

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