BIORESOURCE-BASED ENERGY FOR SUSTAINABLE SOCIETIES: Life Cycle Assessment

for more information, see http://depts.washington.edu/bioenrgy/

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a protocol to assess the environmental, economic, and social impacts of an industrial system. Geographic areas, business sectors, corporations or institutions, and product systems define such industrial systems. The life cycle of the industrial system extends from cradle-to-grave: from materials acquisition and production, through manufacturing, system use and maintenance, and finally through the end of the system’s life. LCA provides a method (1) to collect and manage materials and energy information for a life cycle and (2) to assess the potential environmental, economic, and social impacts of materials and energy flows. The LCA protocol is described in to include four components:

• Goal and Scope Definition- A statement of the purpose of the study and the determination of technologies that comprise the system life cycle. 

• Inventory Analysis- A quantification of material and energy use, recovery, and waste for the technologies of the life cycle. 

• Impact Analysis- An examination of the contribution of material and energy use, recovery, and waste to impacts to the environment, economy, or society. 

• Interpretation- A technique to identify, quantify, check and evaluate the results of the inventory and impact assessments.

LCA has become very important to the assessment of bioproduct systems, with the bioenergy life cycle depicted below.

The BioEnergy Life Cycle