Life Cycle Assessment and Environmental Valuation of Biochar Production: Two Case Studies in Belgium

Abstract

It is unclear whether the production of biochar is economically feasible. As a consequence, firms do not often invest in biochar production plants. However, biochar production and application might be desirable from a societal perspective as it might entail net environmental benefits. Hence, the aim of this work has been to assess and monetize the environmental impacts of biochar production systems so that the environmental aspects can be integrated with the economic and social ones later on to quantify the total return for society. Therefore, a life cycle analysis (LCA) has been performed for two potential biochar production systems in Belgium based on two different feedstocks: (i) willow and (ii) pig manure. First, the environmental impacts of the two biochar production systems are assessed from a life cycle perspective, assuming one ton of biochar as the functional unit. Therefore, LCA using SimaPro software has been performed both on the midpoint and endpoint level. Biochar production from willow achieves better results compared to biochar from pig manure for all environmental impact categories considered. In a second step, monetary valuation has been applied to the LCA results in order to weigh environmental benefits against environmental costs using the Ecotax, Ecovalue, and Stepwise approach. Consequently, sensitivity analysis investigates the impact of variation in NPK savings and byproducts of the biochar production process on monetized life cycle assessment results. As a result, it is suggested that biochar production from willow is preferred to biochar production from pig manure from an environmental point of view. In future research, those monetized environmental impacts will be integrated within existing techno-economic models that calculate the financial viability from an investor’s point of view, so that the total return for society can be quantified and the preferred biochar production system from a societal point of view can be identified.

WP3 – Innovation in Agriculture and Forestry Sector for Energetic Sustainability

“…Papers submitted and published in this Special Issue "WP3-Innovation in Agriculture and Forestry Sector for Energetic Sustainability" bring together some of the latest research results in the field of biomass valorization and the process of energy production and climate change and other items about energetic sustainability [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20]. Moreover it is very important to evaluate the safety aspects for energy plant use [21][22][23][24].…”

Energy Evaluation and Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Reed Plant Pelletizing and Utilization as Solid Biofuel

“…To assess the impact on the environment of reed plant pellet preparation for heat energy generation and use, the analysis has relied upon the assessment of the GHG emissions. The software SimaPro 8.0.5 was used to assess GHG emissions [48].…”

“…GJ −1 . Some researchers, such as Jolliet, Hamedani, and others, have also presented the methodology and research results of plant biomass life cycle assessment and environmental impact [47,48]. European countries, utilizing different herbaceous and woody energy plants and their wastes for combustion.…”

“…GJ −1 . Some researchers, such as Jolliet, Hamedani, and others, have also presented the methodology and research results of plant biomass life cycle assessment and environmental impact [47,48]. The results from [61] suggested that the emissions of greenhouse gases of the wood pellet production process consisted of only 6.5 kg CO2-eq.…”

The Economics of Fruit and Vegetable Production Irrigated with Reclaimed Water Incorporating the Hidden Costs of Life Cycle Environmental Impacts

“…A growing number of researchers are estimating the environmental external costs of products and services by the monetary valuation of LCA results. Hamedani et al [18] applied monetized LCA to weigh the environmental benefits against the environmental costs of biochar production from willow versus biochar production from pig manure. Olba-Zięty et al [19] used the ReCiPe midpoint method [20] to calculate the cradle-tofarm environmental external cost of poplar wood chips in Poland.…”