Resource Issues and Life Cycle Assessment LCA

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Resource Issues and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)

• Lecture C

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Starting

• Among other things, sustainability requires
• Resources
• Environmental quality
• This lecture covers these two issues
• Terminology, new ideas, some tools

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Issues and Thoughts

• Rapidly industrializing world is consuming
  resources at unprecedented rate
• Nonrenewable resources are being rapidly depleted
  or rich veins are depleted
• Renewable resources are being depleted faster
  than the generation rate.
• Question How do we conserve nonrenewable
  resources and regenerate renewables while
  protecting biodiversity?

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Some Terminology

• Carrying Capacity
• Ecological Footprint
• Ecological Rucksack
• Materials Intensity Per Service Unit (MIPS)
• Factor 4 and Factor 10 (and Factor x)
• Hubberts Curve and Hubberts Pimple
• Dematerialization , Deenergization,
  Decarbonization

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Key Resources

• Air degradation by human activities
• Water Surface, groundwater, aquifers, fossil
  water
• Agricultural Soil regeneration rate (best case)
  is 10 tons/hectare (1 mm deep soil over a
  hectare)
• Nonrenewable resources (the worlds geologic
  endowment) fossil fuels, ores
• Renewable resources (solar driven) forests,
  biomass, soil, fisheries
• Intangible resources (no upper limit) open
  space, beauty, serenity, genius, information,
  diversity, satisfaction

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Resource Consumption Patterns
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Oil Production
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Actual Oil Consumption
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Hubberts Pimple - Oil Consumption
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Carrying Capacity

• ...the maximum population that can be sustained
  in a habitat without the degradation of the
  life-support system.
• An environment's carrying capacity isits maximum
  persistently supportable load (Catton 1986).
• sustained, instantaneous, maximum, optimum,
  human, physical, hydrologic, global, biophysical,
  real, and natural carrying capacity
• Knowing the carrying capacity of an ecosystem is
  an important planning tool because it provides
  information on when the services of the ecosystem
  are being exceeded, leading to its possible
  collapse and the total or partial loss of the
  services of the system

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Carrying Capacity Constraints

• Human carrying capacity depends on both natural
  constraints and cultural choices
• Natural constraints include the distribution and
  availability of potable water, the quality of
  soil, ecosystem biodiversity, weather, terrain,
  and the occurrence of natural disasters
• Cultural constraints economic system, political
  institutions, values, tastes, fashions, religion,
  family structure, educational concepts, and the
  handling of externalities

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Arguments against Carrying Capacity

• Reserves of natural resources are predicated on
  the technology developed for their extraction,
  consequently technology ultimately defines the
  economics of resource extraction
• Technology allows the development of substitutes
  for resources that become relatively scarce
• Less resources are needed each year to produce
  goods and services due to increasing knowledge
  and newer technologies
• Effects of competition as various manufacturers
  or suppliers vie to provide the goods and
  services demanded by companies and individuals

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Human Carrying Capacity

• UN forecast of between 7.7 and 12 billion people
  in the year 2050
• In 2000 the worlds population was 6.1 billion
  with an annual growth rate of 1.7, creating a
  doubling time of 42 years
• Wide variety of estimates as to how many people
  the world can support

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Ecological Footprint

• Ecological Footprint (EF) is the quantity of land
  needed to support a person, population, activity,
  or and economy
• EF uses five major categories of consumption to
  compute the corresponding land area food,
  housing, transportation, consumer goods, and
  services
• Londons impacts on ecosystems when analysis
  indicates that its EF is 120 times its physical
  footprint
• The Dutch have an EF 15 times greater than its
  actual land area
• The available land per person to produce the
  required goods and services and assimilate their
  waste is about 1.5 hectares. Americans are using
  3x their Earth Share.

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Ecological Footprint of a Canadian
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Consumption Worldwide
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http//www.bestfootforward.com/index.htm
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Ecological Rucksack and MIPS

• Ecological Rucksack The total weight of
  material flow carried by an item if consumption
  in the course of its life cycle.
• MIPS (Materials Intensity per service unit) An
  indicator based on the material flow and the
  number of services provided.
• Reducing MIPS is equivalent to increasing
  resource productivity

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Ecological Rucksack Diagram
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Some other ecological rucksacks
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Plastic or Cotton Bag?
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Factor 4 and Factor 10

• Factor 4 the idea that resource productivity
  should be quadrupled so that wealth is doubled
  and resource use is cut in half. Doing more with
  less. Result substantial macroeconomic gains.
• Factor 10 per capita materials flows in OECD
  countries should be cut by a factor of ten.
  Requirement to be able to live sustainably in the
  next 25-50 years.
• Note technology for Factor 4 already exists!!
• Facto x Going beyond Factor 4 and Factor 10

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GM Ultralight Car
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Concluding Thoughts on Resource Issues

• Adequate resources are essential for
  sustainability
• Ecological systems must be protected and restored
  during/after resource extraction
• Beware of the Ecological Rucksack!
• Renewable resource extraction rate lt regeneration
  rate
• Dematerialization and deenergization are
  essential

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Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA)

• An evolving, multidisciplinary tool for measuring
  environmental performance
• A cradle-to-grave systems approach for
  understanding the environmental consequences of
  technology choices
• Concept all stages of the life of a material
  generate environmental impacts raw materials
  extraction, procesing, intermediate materials
  manufacture, product manufacture, installation,
  operation and maintenance, removal, recycling,
  reuse, or disposal

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General Materials Flow for Cradle-to-Grave
Analysis of a Product System
Reuse
Product Recycling
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General LCA Methodology
I. Goal Identification and Scoping What is the
purpose of the LCA? What decision is the LCA
meant to support? Where are the environmental
impact boundaries to be drawn? Are all impacts,
secondary, tertiary included? II. Four-Step LCA
Analytic Process 1. Inventory Analysis
environmental inputs 2. Impact Assessment 3.
Impact Evaluation 4. Improvement Assessment Step
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1. Inventory Analysis

• Identify and quantify all environmental inputs
  and outputs over the life cycle
• Inputs energy, water, other resources
• Outputs Emissions and releases to air ,water,
  land
• Includes uncertainty ranges

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2. Impact Assessment

• Classify inventory items by impact greenhouse
  warming gases, ozone depletion, soil erosion,
  biodiversity, human health, natural resource
• Data converted to equivalency factors and impact
  per functional unit of material
• Greenhouse warming Halogenated compounds gt CH4 gt
  CO2
• CO2 equivalents per square meter
• Allow direct numerical comparisons between
  materials

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3. Impact Assessment

• Impact assessment results are normalize into an
  overall environmental score for each alternative
• Result relative environmental scores for each
  alternative that can be ranked

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4. Improvement Assessment

• Review the results to determine key impacts
• Evaluate process alternatives to reduce impacts
• Consider Design of the Environment and Industrial
  Ecology approaches

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SETAC

• Society for Environmental Toxicology and
  Chemistry
• Standardized LCA approach
• International society dedicated to LCA

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Example Cloth vs. Disposable Diapers

• LCA of the comparative environmental impacts of
  using cloth or disposable diapers
• Single use, home-laundered, commercial service
• Resource and environmental profile analysis
  (REPA)
• Assessed at each stage
• Energy consumption
• Water usage
• Atmospheric and waterborne emissions
• Solid waste

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Conclusions - LCA

• Standard method for assessing the environmental
  performance of product manufacturing
• Large array of data inputs and outputs
• Complex and difficult to use for comparing
  options
• Excellent tool for companies to use to assess how
  they can improve their production