This initial study of environmental impacts by continuing current conventional building practices and by changing to increased use of wood is in Danish but has a 5 page illustrated summary in English.
In this project we analysed the EU product environmental footprint (PEF) methodology, the state of databases on climate footprints, the current knowledge on effective label design, and relevant EU regulation. The basis for our analysis was that an effective climate labelling scheme will require a methodology, a database, and a label format that allows consistent comparison both within and across product categories. On this basis we identified the necessary preconditions and suggested a way forward in a study report. The Options Brief (short document for policy makers) can be accessed as an annex from the study at the project website of the European Parliament.
An effective climate labelling scheme requires a methodology, a database, and a label format that allows consistent comparison both within and across product categories. To this end, we analyse the EU product environmental footprint (PEF) methodology, the state of databases on climate footprints, the current knowledge on effective label design, and relevant EU regulation. Based on this analysis, we conclude that further preparation is required before a voluntary, horizontal climate labelling scheme can be established under Union law, across all product categories. Specific improvements are proposed to harmonise and simplify the PEF methodology. We also propose that a globally complete, consistent, and open background database is established and maintained, with an acceptable level of product detail. A label design is proposed that allows seamless cross-category comparison and consideration of the 'monetary rebound' effect, as well as easy communication of uncertainty. The development of a roadmap is also proposed. This should consider the broader context of environmental and sustainability labelling and the need to improve international product life cycle assessment standards and harmonise conflicting EU calculation rules.
Limiting post-combustion emissions is one of the most urgent actions for environmental remediation. However, capture technologies face multiple challenges mostly due to the low concentration of pollutants, such as carbon dioxide (CO₂) or nitrogen oxides (NOₓ), making them highly inefficient. Additionally, even if successful, there are very few plausible uses for the captured pollutants, apart from long-term geological storage.
In the pursuit of a more sustainable future, SUPERVAL’s primary objective is to address these challenges simultaneously, investigating the viability of a technology capable of transforming the treatment of post-combustion gases to unlock the potential of carbon and nitrogen components by separating and transforming them into valuable resources.
SUPERVAL will design and realize an autonomous, solar-powered installation able to capture harmful emissions from flue gas, and valorise them as commodities for the chemical industry. The CO2 will be transformed into an organic, energy-rich molecule (formate). The NOx will be also captured and transformed, in combination with N2, into ammonia using the hydrogen obtained in the CO2 co-electrolysis processes. This integrated effort will offer the comprehensive capture and valorisation of carbon and nitrogen components in post-combustion emissions, thus limiting pollutants and resulting in added-value chemicals. The corresponding techno-economic analysis and life cycle assessment studies will help to shape the components and performance of SUPERVAL as a useful technological advancement in the search for zero net emissions.
SUPERVAL will be coordinated by the research institution Institut Catala d'Investigacio Química (ICIQ-CERCA) and will bring together a consortium of diverse organizations contributing their unique expertise and resources. The participating partners include: Orchestra Scientific. Universitat Politècnica de València – UPV, Consorzio Interuniversitario Nazionale per la Scienza e Tecnologia dei Materiali - INSTM UdR Messina, CASPE Laboratory. Forschungszentrum Julich, Technische Universiteit Eindhoven - TU/e. Vareser 96 and 2.-O LCA Consultants.
In Triple-A-COAT* three forms of nanocellulose will be augmented for antimicrobial/antiviral/antifungal activity through grafting/adsorption of novel, resistance-proof compounds with excellent activities against bacteria, fungi and/or viruses, and nanopatterning to create bio-inspired antimicrobial surfaces.
Nanocellulose is a versatile nanomaterial obtained from wood pulp or biotechnological methods. It has excellent physical properties for coatings, enabling controllable and standardised application of antimicrobial functionalities.
The goal of the project is to meet or exceed current antimicrobial/antiviral/antifungal coatings efficacy, but with a minimal risk of resistance development and avoiding the safety issues of inorganic nanoparticles. In Triple-A-COAT, 2.-0 LCA consultants will apply LCA to the production, use and disposal of nanocellulose, and compare the LCAs of the best performing coatings with competing products. This may identify ways in which Triple-A-COAT partners can optimize the sustainability of the coatings even further.
Within 5-10 years after the end of the project, the results will be commercialized for impact in the transportation and healthcare sectors, contributing to the better control of infectious disease, and boosting the competitiveness and research leadership of EU industry including SMEs.
The project coordinator is Belgian university KU Leuven and you can read more on the project website and join the project social media on: Twitter, Linkedin, Facebook.
*Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or The European Health and Digital Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
What are the options for Nordic Ecolabelling to support the reduction of global warming from buildings by adding more requirements for specific building materials or building parts, e.g. by requiring calculations of the global warming impact for either a part for the entire life cycle of the buildings? We investigate this question by reviewing the current landscape of life-cycle based standards, methods and tools available for designers and producers of buildings and building materials. We identify a number of ambiguities in the standards that cause inconsistencies in their interpretation and practical implementation, resulting in a limited comparability of results from different databases and tools.
We conclude that the current consistency and comparability of life-cycle based calculations for construction products are insufficient to be the basis for the Nordic Ecolabelling programme to require such calculations as part of their criteria. In spite of this, we identify three areas where ecolabelling criteria would currently be verifiable:
• Requirements on specific construction products with identical functionality, where greenhouse gas emission reductions are clearly verifiable, e.g. when obtained through light-weighting.
• Requirements aiming at increasing recycling, such as design for disassembly and minimum recycling targets specified by material type.
• Requirements to reduce overall material demand over the forecasted service life of the building under well-specified, realistic use scenarios.
It is obviously not the role of the ecolabelling programmes to rectify the current consistency and comparability problems of life-cycle based calculations or the ambiguities in the standards. Nevertheless, to incentivise radical building design changes, it is imperative to seek cooperation with other stakeholders that have similar interests in obtaining consistent and comparable results from life-cycle based calculations, an issue that is not limited to building materials. We recommend a cooperation of stakeholders with the aim of establishing a common open database that:
• Has globally complete system boundaries,
• Links unit processes according to verifiable cause-effect relationships,
• Enforces a strict completeness requirement on the included unit processes, using mass and monetary balancing,
• Includes future scenarios based on realistic and transparent procedures,
• Requires activities, and thus flows, to be clearly specified in time, and
• Requires all flows to be provided with uncertainty.
All of these aims can be seen as supported by the current standards. Once a database with the above specifications has been established, we recommend that Nordic Ecolabelling requires LCA calculations to be performed with data from this database, unless the user can provide improved data.
We recommend that such calculations be required at the whole building level, in a phased approach comparable to that currently applied in the Norwegian FutureBuilt programme. Here, a total of four calculations are required:
• A baseline calculation, following detailed, unambiguous rules,
• The targeted building, where a reduction criterion relative to the baseline building must be met,
• For the completed building, as built, for the building after 2 years of operation, with data for realised consumption and transport patterns of users.
An additional calculation is also recommended for the choice of demolition of any pre-existing building and building new versus renovation of the pre-existing building.
Corporate author(s): 2-0 LCA, Directorate-General for Environment (European Commission), Heid und Partner Rechtsanwälte GmbH, Pré, RISE, Umweltbundesamt.
Environmental policies often underperform due to so-called rebound effects, namely behavioural and systemic responses to technical change leading to additional consumption and environmental damage. While evidence of rebound is abundant, studies generally focus on technical changes that are neither associated with specific technologies nor their production costs, making it difficult to connect these changes with the policies governing them. To overcome this limitation, this study proposes to combine a technology-rich model based on life cycle assessment and a behaviour-optimising model for the global economy based on computable general equilibrium modelling. This approach allows to quantify policy-induced economy-wide rebound effects for four relevant environmental impacts: climate change, acidification, photochemical ozone formation, and particulate matter. We apply this approach to evaluate the effectiveness of the United Kingdom’s subsidy on electric cars. The results show notable economy-wide rebound effects associated with this subsidy: over or close to 100% (no environmental benefits) for acidification and particulate matter impacts, and a lower, yet notable, magnitude for climate change (~20–50%) and photochemical ozone formation (~30–80%) impacts. The results also show the important role of macro-economic effects from price changes, particularly how the shift from petrol to electricity triggered additional demand for cheaper petrol.
Aalborg Kommune ønsker en analyse af potentialet for cirkulær økonomi i Nordjylland. I forbindelse med projektet Det Cirkulære Nordjylland (CN) findes det meningsfuldt at systematisere indsatsen på en række områder. Aalborg Kommune ønsker at kvalificere den nordjyske indsats ved at identificere potentialer ud fra en LCA-baseret kortlægning af de nordjyske ressourcestrømme. Disse ressourcestrømme skal være i overensstemmende med de fokusområder, der fokuseres på i CN. Derudover ønsker Aalborg Kommune hjælp til at kunne kommunikere denne indsats, så det er forståeligt for menig mand, politikere, kommunale sagsbehandlere, erhvervsfolk osv.
Formålet med analysen er:
En opgørelse af materiale- og energiflows omfatter både, hvad der produceres og bruges i regionen. Brug af materialer og energi og affaldsgenerering opdeles på henholdsvis regionens virksomheder og endeligt forbrug (husholdninger). Massestrømsanalysen anvendes til at identificere de store strømme i regionen. Det er ofte her, at de største potentialer for en mere cirkulær økonomi kan findes.
For at sikre, at der ikke blot er fokus på de største masse- og energistrømme, opgøres miljøpåvirkningerne i et livscyklusperspektiv. Dette er vigtigt, da der er stor forskel på miljøpåvirkningen per tons materiale for forskellige produkt- og restprodukt kategorier. Beregningen af livscyklusmiljøpåvirkninger foretages både i et produktions- og et forbrugsperspektiv.
Når der arbejdes med at gøre en region mere cirkulær og bæredygtig, så er det vigtigt både at have fokus på virksomhederne og på forbrugerne i kommunen. På den ene side findes oftest de største, let implementerbare forbedringer hos virksomhederne, fx i form af minimering af spild, energi og vand m.m. På den anden side findes de største potentielle forbedringer oftest hos forbrugerne, hvor der er potentiale for ændringer i sammensætningen af forbruget, fx reduktion af (rødt kød), cykel og kollektiv transport, valg af bolig m.m. Ændringer i sammensætning af forbruget kan potentielt reducere påvirkningerne meget mere end ændringer i produktionen, men den slags ændringer er oftest væsentlig sværere at implementere end miljøforbedringer hos virksomhederne.
The current global interest in circular economy (CE) opens an opportunity to make society’s consumption and production patterns more resource efficient and sustainable. However, such growing interest calls for precaution as well, as there is yet no harmonised method to assess whether a specific CE strategy contributes towards sustainable consumption and production. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is very well suited to assess the sustainability impacts of CE strategies. This position paper of the Life Cycle Initiative (hosted by UNEP) provides an LCA perspective on the development, adoption, and implementation of CE, while pointing out strengths and challenges in LCA as an assessment methodology for CE strategies.
