The Application of Circular Footprint Formula in Bioenergy/Bioeconomy: Challenges, Case Study, and Comparison with Life Cycle Assessment Allocation Methods

Abstract

Allocation methodological choices in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a relevant issue for the Circular Bioeconomy context. The recent Product Environmental Footprint Guide from the European Commission includes the Circular Footprint Formula (CFF) as a new way to deal with energy recovery/recycling processes. This paper investigated CFF vs. other different LCA allocation methods in Brazilian briquette production. A cradle-to-gate LCA study was conducted considering 1 MJ of energy from recovered and dedicated Eucalyptus briquette production. Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Cumulative Energy Demand (CED) were selected as the impact categories to evaluate the allocation methods choice that influences the potential impacts. LCA results were compared regarding four allocation methods. Eucalyptus wood as a biomass supply scenario achieved impact results up to 4.3 kg CO2-eq. for GWP and 0.0272 MJ-eq. for CED. The recovery wood scenario presented LCA burdens reduction by up to 206% for GWP, however a 492% increase in the CED results. CFF provided the lowest results for both impact categories. However, the CFF method still doesn’t address particular aspects of circular bioenergy systems. Biomass and bioenergy LCA require further adjustments focusing on biochemical flows in the CFF calculation procedure to lead the development of innovative circular business models.

The Circularity of Materials from the Perspective of a Product Life Cycle: A Life Cycle Assessment Case Study of Secondary Fence Boards—Part 1 (Baseline Scenario)

“…The above-mentioned method is asymmetric because the environmental credit assigned to recycled material leaving a product system is different from the environmental burden assigned to the recycled material when it enters the next product system, and this was one of the reasons why the BPX 50/50-based approach was replaced by the circular footprint formula (CFF) [19]. Some papers have investigated CFF vs. other different LCA allocation methods based on specific case studies (e.g., [20,21]). They focused more on comparing allocation procedures than analysing different scenarios of a given product system, which is the intention of our research.…”

“…It is interesting that the complexity of using the CFF method compared to other allocation methods was noted. It was also noted that CFF does not address some aspects of specific circular systems (e.g., bioeconomy) [20]. The CFF was developed by the European Commission as part of the Environmental Footprint Initiative [22].…”