Life-cycle based dynamic assessment of mineral wool insulation in a Danish residential building application

Defining Temporally Dynamic Life Cycle Assessment: A Review

“…Among all the assessed literature (omitting partial frameworks), a PDLCA, that is, a DLCA that does not exhibit dynamism in all phases or parts, is most common (93%). For example, Sohn et al (, , ) analyzed different insulation materials with a DSys that incorporated a shift in background energy grid (i.e., from coal to natural gas) but did not incorporate either DPI (i.e., technological improvement within individual technologies) or DChar. While in that case it was likely that the omission had no material impact on the results, cases where that would not hold true can easily be envisioned.…”

“…For example, in the aforementioned energy production system, environmental impacts within the energy production process could vary more than 50%, with an approximately 8% variance in the economics of the system (Björk and Rasmuson ). While this type of variance can be straightforwardly implemented in foreground processes developed by the LCA practitioner, implementing such variation can be more difficult in background processes where representative unit processes from existing databases that are difficult to modify might be used, such as those carried out in Sohn et al (, , ). The distinction between DPI and DSys can become rather fine, as in Miller et al (), where changes in a particular type of production are modeled as discrete processes which are then implemented to various degrees by the technology adopters.…”

“…Because DSys can incorporate variation in the background systems, such as energy grid composition, it can be incorporated in a wide variety of time scales. For example, hourly resolution might be important in some cases (Ben et al ; Messagie et al ), while annualized change in system composition might be important in others, such as in analysis of an overall energy grid (Sohn et al ). Although changes in unit processes (i.e., DPI) are not accounted for in DSys, oftentimes the effects of such changes (e.g., electricity generation plants becoming more efficient with time) are well understood and can thus be estimated and accounted for in sensitivity analysis.…”

“…It is also of great importance in product systems where present expenditures of impact are used to prevent future impacts that may happen long into the future and where impact payback times are great. The analysis of building insulation for near net‐zero energy housing in Sohn et al (), for example, could benefit greatly from such an addition. The incorporation of dynamic characterization factors, however, can be especially challenging because they are not readily implemented in many existing LCA software packages.…”

“…The issue of assessing market change independent from the proposed system or product alternatives within the scope of an LCA is not addressed in the aforementioned ILCD definitions for either consequential or attributional LCA, but some of the language used regarding attributional LCA might lead to the belief that attributional DLCA would be precluded from such an assessment. In practice, however, both consequential and attributional LCA methods are used in developing DLCA as seen among the assessed DLCA where Sohn et al () used an attributional approach, while Roux et al () take a consequential approach. The application of attributional and consequential approaches in DLCA is also further discussed by Collinge et al (); they describe the concept that in a DLCA, the application or function of the system studied, the supply chain, and environmental effects of an emission can vary independently, thus allowing both consequential or attributional approaches.…”