The project included a review of the LCI data currently available in the ecoinvent database for platinum group metals (PGM), a literature review on PGM production by mines worldwide, a market analysis on PGM supply and demand, the identification of the determining product and dependent co-products in each mine, as well as generating LCI datasets for a total of five metals: palladium, platinum, rhodium, iridium and ruthenium, using the ecoinvent database as background.
This study was commissioned by Kopenhagen Fur and performed by 2-0 LCA and resulted in a proprietary report.
This project used the multi-regional hybrid input-output database EXIOBASE as a background database with foreground data provided by Vitrolife A/S. The assessment was performed according to ISO standards on LCA: ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006.
Assessing impacts of abiotic resource use has been a topic of persistent debate among life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method developers and a source of confusion for life cycle assessment (LCA) practitioners considering the different interpretations of the safeguard subject for mineral resources and the resulting variety of LCIA methods to choose from. Based on the review and assessment of 27 existing LCIA methods, accomplished in the first part of this paper series (Sonderegger et al. 2020), this paper provides recommendations regarding the application-dependent use of existing methods and areas for future method development.
Within the “global guidance for LCIA indicators and methods” project of the Life Cycle Initiative hosted by UN Environment, 62 members of the “task force mineral resources” representing different stakeholders discussed the strengths and limitations of existing LCIA methods and developed initial conclusions. These were used by a subgroup of eight members at the Pellston Workshop® held in Valencia, Spain, to derive recommendations on the application-dependent use and future development of impact assessment methods.
First, the safeguard subject for mineral resources within the area of protection (AoP) natural resources was defined. Subsequently, seven key questions regarding the consequences of mineral resource use were formulated, grouped into “inside-out” related questions (i.e., current resource use leading to changes in opportunities for future users to use resources) and “outside-in” related questions (i.e., potential restrictions of resource availability for current resource users). Existing LCIA methods were assigned to these questions, and seven methods (ADPultimate reserves, SOPURR, LIME2endpoint, CEENE, ADPeconomic reserves, ESSENZ, and GeoPolRisk) are recommended for use in current LCA studies at different levels of recommendation. All 27 identified LCIA methods were tested on an LCA case study of an electric vehicle, and yielded divergent results due to their modeling of impact mechanisms that address different questions related to mineral resource use. Besides method-specific recommendations, we recommend that all methods increase the number of minerals covered, regularly update their characterization factors, and consider the inclusion of secondary resources and anthropogenic stocks. Furthermore, the concept of dissipative resource use should be defined and integrated in future method developments.
In an international consensus-finding process, the current challenges of assessing impacts of resource use in LCA have been addressed by defining the safeguard subject for mineral resources, formulating key questions related to this safeguard subject, recommending existing LCIA methods in relation to these questions, and highlighting areas for future method development.
The safeguard subject of the Area of Protection “natural Resources,” particularly regarding mineral resources, has long been debated. Consequently, a variety of life cycle impact assessment methods based on different concepts are available. The Life Cycle Initiative, hosted by the UN Environment, established an expert task force on “Mineral Resources” to review existing methods (this article) and provide guidance for application-dependent use of the methods and recommendations for further methodological development (Berger et al. in Int J Life Cycle Assess, 2020).
Starting in 2017, the task force developed a white paper, which served as its main input to a SETAC Pellston Workshop® in June 2018, in which a sub-group of the task force members developed recommendations for assessing impacts of mineral resource use in LCA. This article, based mainly on the white paper and pre-workshop discussions, presents a thorough review of 27 different life cycle impact assessment methods for mineral resource use in the “natural resources” area of protection. The methods are categorized according to their basic impact mechanisms, described and compared, and assessed against a comprehensive set of criteria.
Four method categories have been identified and their underlying concepts are described based on existing literature: depletion methods, future efforts methods, thermodynamic accounting methods, and supply risk methods. While we consider depletion and future efforts methods more “traditional” life cycle impact assessment methods, thermodynamic accounting and supply risk methods are rather providing complementary information. Within each method category, differences between methods are discussed in detail, which allows for further sub-categorization and better understanding of what the methods actually assess.
We provide a thorough review of existing life cycle impact assessment methods addressing impacts of mineral resource use, covering a broad overview of basic impact mechanisms to a detailed discussion of method-specific modeling. This supports a better understanding of what the methods actually assess and highlights their strengths and limitations. Building on these insights, Berger et al. (Int J Life Cycle Assess, 2020) provide recommendations for application-dependent use of the methods, along with recommendations for further methodological development.
This paper presents a market-price-based method to value sub-soil resources in environmental Cost-Benefit Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment. The market price incorporates the privileged information of the market agents, explicitly or implicitly anticipating future applications of the resource, future backstop technologies, recycling potentials, the evolution of reserves and extraction costs. The market price is therefore considered as the best available integrated information reflecting the actual values of these parameters. Our method is based on the Hotelling rule and the fact that private agents discount future costs and benefits at a higher rate than society as a whole. In practice, the price of the last resource unit sold is calculated with the Hotelling rule using a market discount rate. Then, the price at depletion is retropolated with a social discount rate smaller than the market discount rate. The resulting corrected “socially optimal” price is higher than the market price. The method allows to calculate the social cost of resource exhaustion, which is applicable in Cost-Benefit Analysis and Life Cycle Assessment. The method is applied to mineral and fossil resources and the results are compared with other recent methods that seek to place a monetary value on resource depletion.
The implementation of the EU Directive 2005/32/EC on ecodesign was investigated for televisions (TVs). The aim of the project was to investigate the scope of the Implementing Measures (IM), how ambitious the requirements of the IM are, and to what degree they can promote eco-innovations of TVs.
The project covered five parts:
• Definition of ecodesign
• The EuP process: from preparatory study to Implementing Measures
• The relations between EuP Implementing Measures and the different
energy and environmental labelling schemes
• New market and technology trends compared to requirements of
Implementing Measures and ecolabelling
• Analysis of the EU Energy labelling scheme for TVs
Read more in the project report or the article published in the International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment.
Over the years, we have contributed to the ISO standardisation work in the following contexts:
The project applied the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method and it mainly focuses on greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, or carbon footprint to use a catchier phrase. The focus on GHG emissions is partly a result of the requirements from the commissioner of the study and partly due to the fact that the LCA forms part of a strategic environmental assessment (SEA) in which other types of impacts are assessed separately. Other impact categories such as ozone depletion, acidification, eutrophication, eco-toxicity, and human toxicity are included in the present study and presented as part of the results, but are not assessed as detailed as GHG emissions and are therefore subject to considerable uncertainties. The results of the project was described in the project report: Life cycle assessment of aluminium production in new Alcoa smelter in Greenland. The project was initiated by Alcoa and the Government of Greenland.
