The present report is a detailed study of the environmental impacts, seen in a life cycle perspective, of an aluminium smelter with an annual capacity of 360,000 tonnes planned for instalment in West Greenland. The study is initiated by Alcoa and the Government of Greenland. The smelter is still in the planning phase, and will not be operating before 2014, at the earliest.
The objective of the LCA is to provide life cycle-based environmental information on the planned aluminium smelter in relation to the strategic environmental assessment (SEA) process, which is ongoing from 2007 to 2009 (Greenland Home Rule 2007).
This summary is divided into three parts. The first part is the background section that describes the context and purpose of the LCA, while the second part explains the scope of study as well as important methodological considerations and choices. The third part presents the main results of the study. These include the estimated GHG emissions of the planned aluminium smelter in Greenland, and GHG emissions related to an alternative aluminium production. The alternative is assumed to be implemented if the Greenland smelter is not established, or to be avoided if the project continues as planned. Finally, part three comprises a sensitivity analysis highlighting the uncertainties of the LCA results.
The lack of reliable communication tools is anticipated to become an important barrier to design and sell products with improved environmental performance. In this paper, environmental product declarations, EPDs, and in particular a Stepwise EPD approach is investigated as a means to overcome the communication barrier. The experiences of ten European SMEs who have tried to use Stepwise EPDs for market communication and as a basis for eco-design are described and discussed. The experiences suggest that Stepwise EPDs based on life cycle assessment can be a cost-efficient tool to improve the environmental performance of products. For normal marketing activities the Stepwise EPDs were disappointing. Using the underlying LCA as a platform for in-depth communication with selected parties in the supply chain showed more promise.
In order to improve the knowledge of Denmark’s “carbon footprint”, the Danish Energy Agency (DEA) has commissioned a study on the national consumption-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Besides providing new results, this study does also provide a critical review of previous studies. The focus of the review is highlighting methodological differences and any other aspects causing differences in the results obtained.
The main goal of this project is to provide the best possible estimate of Denmark’s consumption-related “carbon footprint” (report in Danish). By carbon footprint is meant GHG-emissions, expressed as carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-eq.). Consumption-related is defined as GHG-emissions from the Danish economy including imports, while emissions associated with exports are excluded. In this respect, the limitations of the traditional geographical approach to account for national emissions are addressed by taking into account the full life cycle of imported products to Danish economy. Data on production, imports, and exports of goods and services are obtained from environmentally-extended input-output (IO) tables. An additional goal of the project is to provide an overview of the products and services imported to and exported from Denmark, and their embedded GHG-emission.
The main results of this project has also been synthesised by Danish Energy Agency in this brief note (in Danish).
The Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) sector has developed considerably during the past century, paving the way for maximum resource (materials and energy) recovery and minimising environmental impacts such as global warming associated with it. The current study is assessing the historical development of MSWM in the municipality of Aalborg, Denmark throughout the period of 1970 to 2010, and its implications regarding Global Warming Potential (GWP100), using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach. Historical data regarding MSW composition, and different treatment technologies such as incineration, recycling and composting has been used in order to perform the analysis. The LCA results show a continuous improvement in environmental performance of MSWM from 1970 to 2010 mainly due to the changes in treatment options, improved efficiency of various treatment technologies and increasing focus on recycling, resulting in a shift from net emission of 618 kg CO2-eq. tonne-1 of MSWM.
Life cycle assessment (LCA) and environmentally extended input output analysis (EEIOA) are two widely used approaches to assess the environmental impacts of products and services with the aim of providing decision support. Here, we compare carbon footprint (CF) results for products and services in the ecoinvent 3.4 cut-off and the hybrid version of EXIOBASE. While we find that there is good agreement for certain sectors, more than half of the matched products differ by more than a factor 2. Best fits are observed in the energy, manufacturing, and agricultural sectors, although deviations are substantial for renewable energy. Poorer fits are observed for waste treatment and mining sectors. Both databases have a limited differentiation in the service sector. Differences can, to some degree, be explained by methodological differences, such as system boundaries and approaches used to resolve multi-functionality, and data differences. The common finding that, due to incomplete economic coverage (truncation error), LCA-based CFs should be lower than EEIOA-based CFs, could not be confirmed. The comparison of CFs from LCA and EEIOA databases can provide additional insights into the uncertainties of CF results, which is important knowledge when guiding decision makers. An approach that uses the coefficient of variation to identify strategic database improvement potentials is also presented and highlights several product groups that could deserve additional attention in both databases. Further strategic database improvements are crucial to reduce uncertainties and increase the robustness of decision support that the industrial ecology community can provide for the economic transformations ahead of us.
The hotspot analysis shows that the use phase, and internet traffic in particular, dominates the total climate footprint of the Jabra Panacast. Focusing on the contribution of the Jabra Panacast equipment itself, except for its use, the main contributing components are the cast aluminium, the polycarbonate resin, and the USB cable, which point to potential improvement actions under the direct influence of the GN Group.
The Jabra Panacast performs better than face-to-face meetings, except when the nodes are situated very close to each other. Even a non-optimised use (two nodes of two participants) in the region where internet has the largest climate footprint (India) yields low break-even distances of 30 and 16 km for train and air travel, respectively. For any other use and/or region scenario, the break-even distances would be lower. In any case, no scenario yields realistic distances to be covered by air travel, and so we conclude that the Jabra Panacast will always perform better than a face-to-face meeting where the participants travel by air.
