Why going beyond standard LCI databases is important: lessons from a meta-analysis of potable water supply system LCAs

Meron, Noa; Blass, Vered; Garb, Yaakov; Kahane, Yehuda

doi:10.1007/s11367-016-1096-7

Cited by 11 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Generally, there are large differences in water supply systems (Meron et al, 2016), and this is also the conclusion when comparing the results to other findings. For example, the largest impacts are within the resource categories in this study, whereas resource consumption generally had the lowest impacts in another LCA study of Danish water systems (Godskesen et al, 2013).…”

Section: Lcasupporting

confidence: 70%

“…Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool employed to assess environmental impacts within different categories associated with emissions and extractions occurring across all stages of a product's life, from cradle to grave (European Commission, 2010a). With LCAs being applied to more waterintensive activities (Godskesen et al, 2011;Meron et al, 2016), it is essential to include effects of freshwater use. There are few published LCA studies on groundwater systems (Meron et al, 2016), one of which compared four water supply alternatives and documented the relevance of including a freshwater abstraction impact category (WSI) on a local scale (Godskesen et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With LCAs being applied to more waterintensive activities (Godskesen et al, 2011;Meron et al, 2016), it is essential to include effects of freshwater use. There are few published LCA studies on groundwater systems (Meron et al, 2016), one of which compared four water supply alternatives and documented the relevance of including a freshwater abstraction impact category (WSI) on a local scale (Godskesen et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Integrating groundwater stress in life-cycle assessments – An evaluation of water abstraction

Gejl

Bjerg

Henriksen

et al. 2018

Journal of Environmental Management

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Understanding groundwater abstraction effects is vital for holistic impact assessments in areas depending on groundwater resources. The objective of our study was to modify the state-of-the-art AWaRe (available water remaining), freshwater impact assessment specifically for use in LCAs in areas dependent on groundwater resources. The new method, called "AGWaRe" (available groundwater remaining), reflects groundwater availability, based on a fraction of available groundwater remaining locally relative to a reference. Furthermore, our method increases spatial resolution beyond 1770 km grid cells and adjusts demarcations in order to improve the representation of the heterogeneity of groundwater catchments. The applicability of AGWaRe was demonstrated on three groundwater systems producing 5 million m water for the city of Copenhagen, namely Advanced Treatment of Groundwater, Simple Treatment of Groundwater and Infiltration of Reclaimed water. Results were normalised to compare with other effects of supplying water to an average Danish person. The normalised impacts for drinking water for one person ranged between 0.1 and 39 PE (person equivalent) for the three systems, which indicates that effects on groundwater resources differ substantially between systems. A comparative LCA of these groundwater systems shows that other impact categories range between 0 and 1 PE/person. Advanced Treatment of Groundwater generally has the lowest effect, for example <50% of the other groundwater systems in Global Warming Potential. The AGWaRe results indicate that freshwater impacts from Simple Treatment of Groundwater are up to 100 times greater than for Infiltration of Reclaimed water. Furthermore, AGWaRe exposes differences between the groundwater systems that AWaRe cannot evaluate, because one AWaRe cell covers two of the systems in question. These improvements are crucial for groundwater managers looking to include sustainability considerations in their analysis and decision-making.

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Section: Lcasupporting

confidence: 70%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Integrating groundwater stress in life-cycle assessments – An evaluation of water abstraction

Gejl

Bjerg

Henriksen

et al. 2018

Journal of Environmental Management

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…The importance of information about the spread around horizontal averages have been studied for more than 20 years (Smet and Stalmans ; Meron et al. ). However, there is generally no information about the spread around aggregated data from databases, for example, ecoinvent (ecoinvent ) and the European Life Cycle Database (ELCD) (ELCD ), possibly because this information is held by the original data provider or the data set stem from only one source.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Linking Data Choices and Context Specificity in Life Cycle Assessment of Waste Treatment Technologies: A Landfill Case Study

Henriksen

Astrup

Damgaard

2017

J of Industrial Ecology

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To generate meaningful results, life cycle assessments (LCAs) require accurate technology data that are consistent with the goal and scope of the analysis. While literature data are available for many products and processes, finding representative data for highly site-specific technologies, such as waste treatment processes, remains a challenge. This study investigated representative life cycle inventory (LCI) modeling of waste treatment technologies in consideration of variations in technological level and climate. The objectives were to demonstrate the importance of representative LCI modeling as a function of the specificity of the study, and to illustrate the necessity of iteratively refining the goal and scope of the study as data are developed. A landfill case study was performed where 52 discrete landfill data sets were built and grouped to represent different technology options and geographical sites, potential impacts were calculated, and minimum/maximum (min-max) intervals were generated for each group. The results showed decreasing min-max intervals with increasing specificity of the scope of study, which indicates that compatibility between the scope of study and LCI model is critical. Hereby, this study quantitatively demonstrates the influence of representative modeling on LCA results. The results indicate that technology variations and site-specific conditions (e.g., the influence of precipitation and cover permeability on landfill gas generation and collection) should be carefully addressed by a systematic analysis of the key process parameters. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the targeted waste treatment technologies is necessary to ensure that appropriate data choices are made within the boundaries of the defined scope of the study. Keywords:data choices goal and scope definition life cycle assessment (LCA) representativeness waste management waste treatment technologies Supporting information is linked to this article on the JIE website Conflict of interest statement: The authors have no conflict to declare.

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“…Controlled blending of DSW with other water sources. This has been documented in several countries, including Israel [49][50][51][52]; Spain [27,[53][54][55]; Mexico [56,57]; USA (California) [58][59][60]; and Australia [61]. In Israel for example, blending 36% of DSW with other water sources (groundwater, surface water and brackish water) reduced GHG emissions by 53% compared to 100% DSW [52].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Influence of the Water Source on the Carbon Footprint of Irrigated Agriculture: A Regional Study in South-Eastern Spain

et al. 2021

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Curbing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to combat climate change is a major global challenge. Although irrigated agriculture consumes considerable energy that generates GHG emissions, the biomass produced also represents an important CO2 sink, which can counterbalance the emissions. The source of the water supply considerably influences the irrigation energy consumption and, consequently, the resulting carbon footprint. This study evaluates the potential impact on the carbon footprint of partially and fully replacing the conventional supply from Tagus–Segura water transfer (TSWT) with desalinated seawater (DSW) in the irrigation districts of the Segura River basin (south-eastern Spain). The results provide evidence that the crop GHG emissions depend largely on the water source and, consequently, its carbon footprint. In this sense, in the hypothetical scenario of the TSWT being completely replaced with DSW, GHG emissions may increase by up to 50% and the carbon balance could be reduced by 41%. However, even in this unfavourable situation, irrigated agriculture in the study area could still act as a CO2 sink with a negative total and specific carbon balance of −707,276 t CO2/year and −8.10 t CO2/ha-year, respectively. This study provides significant policy implications for understanding the water–energy–food nexus in water-scarce regions.

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Why going beyond standard LCI databases is important: lessons from a meta-analysis of potable water supply system LCAs

Cited by 11 publications

References 42 publications

Integrating groundwater stress in life-cycle assessments – An evaluation of water abstraction

Integrating groundwater stress in life-cycle assessments – An evaluation of water abstraction

Linking Data Choices and Context Specificity in Life Cycle Assessment of Waste Treatment Technologies: A Landfill Case Study

Influence of the Water Source on the Carbon Footprint of Irrigated Agriculture: A Regional Study in South-Eastern Spain

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