Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of Rapeseed and Rapeseed Oil Produced in Northern Europe: A Latvian Case Study

Abstract

There is a major international effort to improve the availability of data for life cycle assessment (LCA), as these assessments have become one of the main pillars driving European policy with respect to the sustainable use of resources. However, there is still a lack of data even for Europe. This study presents a cradle-to-farm gate assessment, or LCA, of winter and spring rapeseed produced in the northern European country of Latvia. The LCA model is based on an in-depth and up-to-date agricultural practice used in the region and covers the time span of 2008–2016. An LCA of rapeseed oil produced by cold pressing was carried out. The environmental impact assessment was calculated with the ReCiPe impact assessment method version 1.03, a hierarchical (H) perspective, along with the cumulative energy demand method v1.11. Cultivation of winter rapeseed has a lower environmental impact than cultivation of spring rapeseed due to higher agricultural inputs and higher yield. The greatest impact is on human health. Mineral fertilizers (production and application) and agricultural machinery are responsible for the greatest environmental impact. The results for the mill stage of rapeseed oil demonstrated that the choice of the allocation method has a significant impact on the environmental performance results.

Agricultural LCA for Food Oil of Winter Rapeseed, Sunflower, and Hemp, Based on Czech Standard Cultivation Practices

“…The results were related to impact categories corresponding to the requirements for the agricultural LCAs [11]. The approach to the elaboration of this study, the approach to modelling, the allocation approach, the functional unit (volume of food oil), the software used, and the source databases were similar to, for example, the study of Fridrihsone et al [28,29], which also focused on oil crops.…”

“…The environmental aspects of rapeseed cultivation, from the LCA perspective, have recently received a relatively large amount of attention (e.g., [8,9,28,29]). This is because rapeseed oil was long thought to cause a lower environmental impact compared to mineral oils, for example.…”

Assessing the Carbon Footprint of Biochar from Willow Grown on Marginal Lands in Finland

“…The values chosen for this study represent a high yield scenario (3600 kg ha −1 ) [26], which is in the range of the yield of fava bean in Finland (2382-4553 kg ha −1 ) [27]. Cultivation emissions for spring rapeseed are taken from Fridrihsone et al [28], who present a cradleto-gate LCA of spring rapeseed in Latvia. Cultivation emissions for potato are from Pulkkinen et al [29].…”

“…The biggest cultivation emissions are found with potato (4760 kgCO 2 eq ha −1 ), and neutralizing those emissions would require a willow buffer zone that is more than the size of the cultivated field (1.13 ha). [25,26,28,29] and the size of the willow buffer zone needed for biochar production to neutralize these emissions. The creation of a carbon neutral field by growing willow for biochar production on a buffer zone would require an average buffer zone of 57% of the field size.…”

Life Cycle Assessment of Green Diesel Production by Hydrodeoxygenation of Palm Oil

“…Researchers have reported several LCA studies for biofuels in the last decades (Sampattagul et al, 2009;Ashnani et al, 2014;Piemonte et al, 2014;Uctug et al, 2017;Fortes et al, 2018;Parajuli et al, 2018;Tabatabaei et al, 2019;Chiriboga et al, 2020;Fridrihsone et al, 2020), showing environmental benefits because it can help moderate the impact of global warming and reduce dependence on fossil fuels. Parajuli et al (Parajuli et al, 2018) described LCA within a biorefinery context, identifying that Abbreviations: DCB, Dichlorobenzene; FFB, Fresh Fruit Bunches; FU, Functional Unit; GHG, Greenhouse Gas; ha, Hectare; HEFA, Hydro-processed Esters and Fatty Acids; LCA, Life Cycle Assessment; R11, Trichloromethane; RD, Renewable Diesel; T, Ton; ULSD, Ultra-Low Sulfur Diesel.…”