Modelling approaches for consequential life-cycle assessment (C-LCA) of bioenergy: Critical review and proposed framework for biogas production

Marvuglia, Antonino; Benetto, Enrico; Rege, Sameer; Jury, Colin

doi:10.1016/j.rser.2013.04.031

Cited by 99 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 51 publications

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“…In the cLCA approach "system expansion" and "substitution", also called "system enlargement" or "crediting" is used to solve multi-functionality (processes with more than one output product) [103] ( Marvuglia et al, 2013). On the contrary, in aLCA allocation is used to solve multi-functionality (see.…”

Section: Type Of Lca Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…aLCA describes the relevant physical input and output flows entering and exiting from a product system, whereas cLCA defines how these flows might be modified in response to a decision or a change [82,103,104]. aLCA is useful for identifying systems with important impacts, whereas cLCA is useful for evaluating the consequences of individual decisions [84].…”

Section: Type Of Lca Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more environmentally sustainable

et al. 2016

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Anaerobic Digestion (AD) has been recognized as a viable solution to produce renewable energy and to reduce global warming especially when secondary feedstock and/or wastes are used. Several LCA studies analysed the environmental performances of biogas production systems. The results of this review highlight that the goal, scope, life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) methodology, feedstocks and geographical regions covered by the studies vary widely. Most studies are based in Europe, several in China and few in South and North America and in Africa. To better highlight how the choices on the feeding mix, the digestate storage, the surplus heat valorisation as well as the plant size can affect the environmental performances of agricultural AD plants four plants have been analyzed in this study. The results suggest that the energy crops production and the operation of anaerobic digesters, including digestate emission from open tanks, are the main contributors to the impacts from biogas electricity. This entails that it is environmentally better to have smaller plants using slurry and waste rather than bigger plants fed with energy crops. Recovering heat waste as well as covering of digestate tank would improve significantly the environmental sustainability of biogas electricity, and particularly the global warming category. We are pleased to enclose the revised version of our original manuscript of our paper entitled "Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more environmentally sustainable" which can hopefully be published in Applied Energy.Many thanks to the reviewers for their comments; they helped us to improve the manuscript.We hope that the manuscript in the revised form is appropriate for publication in Applied Energy.On behalf of all the Authors, as corresponding Author, yours sincerely, Cover Letter Title: Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more sustainable Dear Editor, we would like to thank you for the reviewers' comments. We are grateful to all the reviewers for devoting their time to review our manuscript. As you can see, we have taken most of them into consideration to modify the paper. We hope that the paper in this current revised version can be accepted for publication. Below, we enclose an explanation of how we have addressed the questions raised. Reviewer #1The manuscript is working on the review of the environmental impacts of biogas production. It includes good results, an interesting methodology, and related to the scope of this Journal. I suggest to accept it after some minor revisions. Thank you for your positive comments and for useful suggestions.The authors should write about the difference between their study and the following research: * Hijazi, O., Munro, S., Zerhusen, B. and Effenberger, M., 2016. Review of life cycle assessment for biogas production in Europe. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 54, 1291-300. Done, we specified in the int...

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Section: Type Of Lca Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Type Of Lca Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more environmentally sustainable

et al. 2016

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“…For example, feasible options and impacts for recycling at end-of-life depend (amongst others) on the scaling of action implementation, the costs of recycling, the spatial proximity of facilities and prices for virgin and secondary materials as well as their demand in other sectors. One possible solution to these challenges could be the application of consequential or hybrid LCA methods (c-LCA) because they integrate economic modelling with product-specific impacts (see also Igos et al [100], Dandres et al [101], Marvuglia et al [102]and Earles et al [103]). …”

Section: Lifecycle Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring multiple impacts of low-carbon energy options in a green economy context

Ürge-Vorsatz¹,

Kelemen²,

Herrero

et al. 2016

Applied Energy

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Wuppertal Institut | 1 AbstractThe economic assessment of low-carbon energy options is the primary step towards the design of policy portfolios to foster the green energy economy. However, today these assessments often fall short of including important determinants of the overall cost-benefit balance of such options by not including indirect costs and benefits, even though these can be gamechanging. This is often due to the lack of adequate methodologies.The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive account of the key methodological challenges to the assessment of the multiple impacts of energy options, and an initial menu of potential solutions to address these challenges.The paper first provides evidence for the importance of the multiple impacts of energy actions in the assessment of low-carbon options.The paper identifies a few key challenges to the evaluation of the co-impacts of low-carbon options and demonstrates that these are more complex for co-impacts than for the direct ones. Such challenges include several layers of additionality, high-context dependency, and accounting for distributional effects.The paper continues by identifying the key challenges to the aggregation of multiple impacts including the risks of overcounting while taking into account the multitude of interactions among the various co-impacts. The paper proposes an analytical framework that can help address these and frame a systematic assessment of the multiple impacts.

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“…Consequential LCA has still not achieved a full methodological consensus, mainly due to the different computational approaches proposed by scholars in the recent years. These have stimulated the development of alternative modelling techniques for impact scenarios and technologies implementation (Earles and Halog, 2011;Marvuglia et al, 2013). In this regard, vast literature already presented cases of evaluation of energy supply scenarios based on LCA.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Combination of Equilibrium Models and Hybrid Life Cycle Input-Output Analysis to Predict the Environmental Impacts of Energy Policy Scenarios

et al. 2015

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Nowadays, many countries adopt an active agenda to mitigate the impact of greenhouse gas emissions by moving towards less polluting energy generation technologies. The environmental costs, directly or indirectly generated to achieve such a challenging objective, remain however largely underexplored. Until now, research has focused either on pure economic approaches such as computable general equilibrium (CGE) and partial equilibrium (PE) models, or on (physical) energy supply scenarios. These latter could be used to evaluate the environmental impacts of various energy saving or cleaner technologies via life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. These modelling efforts have, however, been pursued in isolation, without exploring the possible complementarities and synergies. In this study, we have undertaken a practical combination of these approaches into a common framework: on the one hand, by coupling a CGE with a PE model, and, on the other hand, by linking the outcomes from the coupling with a hybrid inputoutput−process based life cycle inventory. The methodological framework aimed at assessing the environmental consequences of two energy policy scenarios in Luxembourg between 2010 and 2025. The study highlights the potential of coupling CGE and PE models but also the related methodological difficulties (e.g. small number of available technologies in Luxembourg, intrinsic limitations of the two approaches, etc.). The assessment shows both environmental synergies and trade-offs due to the implementation of energy policies. For example, despite the changes in technologies towards the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, only marginal improvements are observed in the climate change mitigation scenario as compared to the business-as-usual. The energy related production and imports are indeed expected to increase over time and represent a large contribution to the country's impacts. Interestingly, side effects on other impacts than climate change or fossil resource depletion (e.g. ionising radiation and water depletion) may also occur mainly due to the use of nuclear energy in neighbouring countries.

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Modelling approaches for consequential life-cycle assessment (C-LCA) of bioenergy: Critical review and proposed framework for biogas production

Cited by 99 publications

References 51 publications

Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more environmentally sustainable

Agricultural anaerobic digestion plants: What LCA studies pointed out and what can be done to make them more environmentally sustainable

Measuring multiple impacts of low-carbon energy options in a green economy context

Combination of Equilibrium Models and Hybrid Life Cycle Input-Output Analysis to Predict the Environmental Impacts of Energy Policy Scenarios

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