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Environmental Screening and Evaluation of Energy-using Products (EuP) Final Report

3 Methodology

• 3.1 Product groups included
• 3.2 Life Cycle Assessment
• 3.3 Data sources for the environmental screening

3.1 Product groups included

The Energy-using Products included in this Memorandum can be seen in Table 3.1.

Table 3.1 Groups included

3.2 Life Cycle Assessment

The environmental screening in this Memorandum is based on the principles of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) (The assessment of the environmental aspects, following a product from “cradle to grave” i.e. from extraction of raw materials to production, use, including recycling and final disposal).

For the screening in this Memorandum, the impact assessment method “STEPWISE 2006” has been used. STEPWISE 2006 has been developed by Bo Weidema and is based on the best parts of the EDIP-2003 method combined with the best parts of the IMPACT-2002+ method. Furthermore, new impact categories have been added (e.g. nature occupation). The method is described in Weidema et al. [Wei2008]. Table 3.2 shows the impact categories included in this Memorandum.

The aim of the environmental screening is to identify “hot spots” in the life cycle of the products, i.e. to identify the most important environmental aspects of the products in their entire life cycle from cradle to grave. However, it should be emphasized that the aim of the EuP Preparatory studies mainly is to focus on reducing the energy consumption during use (but also during other life cycle stages). Accordingly, the conclusions in this Memorandum attempt to focus on other environmental aspects than energy related environmental impacts, if relevant (and possible).

Due to the time available, the screening has only been performed where data has been immediately ready in the Ecoinvent database (The Ecoinvent database is the main European database for Life Cycle Assessments today, see www.ecoinvent.ch). For some product groups, data has not been available in Ecoinvent, at an environmental screening of these product groups has not been performed, as that would be too time demanding.

It has further been decided to show the results as characterized results. Weighting, that shows which of the environmental impacts that are most critical to nature and human beings, has generally not been included. The reason for this is that the weighting will show that the energy-related impact categories are most important (i.e. Global Warming) – but in this project we want to focus on the non-energy related environmental impacts.

The screening is performed in the LCA software tool SimaPro version 7.1.6.

Table 3.2 Impact categories included

Notes:

1) The contributions to the formation of photochemical ozone formation come from volatile organic compounds (VOCs), hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxides, methane and carbon monoxide. Ozone in the troposphere can be toxic for humans (at high concentrations) and at lower concentrations it has impacts on vegetation. It is also known as “smog” in large cities (however, the category “photochemical ozone formation” is broader than “smog”).

2) Respiratory inorganics comes from small particulates, ammonia, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxides. It is generally known from the discussion regarding emissions of small particles from diesel cars and their impacts on especially people suffering from asthmatics.

3.3 Data sources for the environmental screening

The environmental screening of selected Energy-using product groups has been based on data from the Ecoinvent database version 2 to the extent that data has been available. The Ecoinvent database is a comprehensive LCA database. For more information, see www.ecoinvent.ch. It has been decided not to include input-output databases in this screening as the data in input-output databases are mainly energy-related, and as the goal of this project is to focus on non-energy related environmental impacts.

Table 3.3 shows a list of for which Energy-using Products, Ecoinvent data have been available. For some of the Energy-using Product Groups, no data is available, and it has not been possible to make a screening.

Table 3.3 Data sources

The screening is based on the Ecoinvent database as it is when delivered with SimaPro. No changes have been made, not regarding electricity production nor regarding any other allocation/ system expansion issues. That means that the electricity production for most processes is based on the average production mix for Europe (called “RER mix” in the Ecoinvent database). A few of the processes are modelled using the Swiss electricity production mix (for the ventilation systems). The choice of electricity mix is significant for the results. The RER production mix and the Swiss production mix can be seen in Table 3.4. Data on the electricity mix are taken from the Ecoinvent report no. 6_XVI by Frischknecht et al. [Fri2007]

Table 3.4 Electricity production mix for Europe (RER) and Switzerland (CH).
(Source: Frischknecht et al. [Fri2007])

As can be seen from Table 3.4, Swiss electricity production is hardly based on fossil fuels, whereas half of the average European electricity production is based on fossil fuels. That makes a significant difference regarding the environmental impacts, see figure 3.1. Figure 3.1 also shows the environmental impacts of electricity based on coal, hydro power and nuclear power in order to illustrate how huge the differences are. The European average electricity production and electricity based on coal gives tremendously larger contributions for almost all impact categories, but for the categories “Non-renewable energy” and “Mineral extraction”.

Figure 3.1 Environmental impact from electricity production (European average, Swiss average, hydropower, nuclear power and coal.).

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Version 1.0 December 2009, © Danish Environmental Protection Agency