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Resource Issues and Life Cycle Assessment LCA

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London's impacts on ecosystems when analysis indicates that its EF is 120 times ... The Dutch have an EF 15 times greater than its actual land area ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

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Title: Resource Issues and Life Cycle Assessment LCA


1
Resource Issues and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
  • Lecture C

2
Starting
  • Among other things, sustainability requires
  • Resources
  • Environmental quality
  • This lecture covers these two issues
  • Terminology, new ideas, some tools

3
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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7
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

8
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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10
Resource Consumption Patterns
11
Oil Production
12
Actual Oil Consumption
13
Hubberts Pimple - Oil Consumption
14
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

15
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

16
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

17
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

18
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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21
Ecological Footprint of a Canadian
22
Consumption Worldwide
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25
http//www.bestfootforward.com/index.htm
26
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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28
Ecological Rucksack Diagram
29
Some other ecological rucksacks
30
Plastic or Cotton Bag?
31
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32
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

33
GM Ultralight Car
34
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

35
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

36
General Materials Flow for Cradle-to-Grave
Analysis of a Product System
Reuse
Product Recycling
37
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
38
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

39
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

40
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

41
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

42
SETAC
  • Society for Environmental Toxicology and
    Chemistry
  • Standardized LCA approach
  • International society dedicated to LCA

43
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

44
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
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