Abstract:
Life Cycle Assessment is a quantitative decision support tool that is increasingly deployed in carbon accounting and similar settings. Yet, it is far more powerful when applied in the prospective design contexts for which it was developed. Although the framework and related life cycle methods can be leveraged for calculations to support compliance mechanisms and other high precision (and often retrospective) contexts, LCA is not a calculator. Deploying LCA for system design questions, including policy and process design, typically yields more valuable outcomes and demonstrates the power of a multicriteria, multistage evaluation tool. This talk will demonstrate some of LCA's specific strengths in decarbonization contexts by highlighting scenario analysis and other design-stage applications of LCA.
Bio:
Dr. Emily Grubert is Associate Professor of Sustainable Energy Policy, and, concurrently, of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences at the University of Notre Dame. Her research focuses on justice-oriented deep decarbonization and decision support tools for large infrastructure systems. Grubert holds a Ph.D. in Environment and Resources from Stanford.
Summary:
Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA)
Formalized decision support framework
Use depends on on the decision being informed
Primarily tool to structure thinking and support decisions
Not a calculator or push-button tool
Distinct from lice cycle analysis or life cycle thinking (less formal)
Assumption: linear impact
Standardized as
ISO 14040: https://www.iso.org/standard/37456.html
ISO 14044: https://www.iso.org/standard/38498.html
Specific steps, approaches and methods
Formalized as flows and impacts of those flows
Must be a complete inventory of impacts
LCA is a formal accounting tool
Cross product of
Life cycle: Production, Processing, Transportation, Conversion, Use, Disposal
All outcomes: Climate, Smog, Water pollution, Toxicity, Habitat, …
LCA is very data intensive
Requires detailed records of what happened in the real world
Project management data: use of concrete, trips by trucks, use of water, etc.
Impact on/Use of common resources: clean air, CO2, etc.
These are typically poorly tracked in reality (unlike money in normal accounting)
Full LCA accounting requires fully accurate data
Less accurate LCA is still very useful for comparing options, as long as the errors go in a consistent way across the options
LCA and carbon accounting:
Using a prospective design tool to look backwards about what happened in the past for purposes of compliance
Much of the required data is not available (e.g. methane leaks) but must be approximated from industry averages/trends
Example: renewable natural gas
Sources: biogenic waste, biogenic non-waste, non-biogenic non-waste
Arguably, burning biogenic methane to turn it into CO2 makes this methane a carbon-neutral source
Reasoning can be used to argue that a fuel that is partially biogenic methane and mostly fossil methane is net carbon neutral (by avoidance of methane emissions)
LCA can document all the flows of material to possible uses or environment, as well as alternative flows we can design
Assumption that non-burned methane would have been vented into the atmosphere can be analyzed precisely
Incentives to use ventable biogenic methane cause people to cause more biogenic methane where you can avoid venting it
Creates new methane that would not have otherwise existed
Also, there are already many regulations to require methane to be burned to avoid uncontrolled flaring in the open air
Combining LCA with analysis of incentives uncovers that burning biogenic methane creates emissions rather than avoids them
Example: LCA for tax credits:
45v (hydrogen)
Estimates that this hydrogen policy would cost $T while generating 3Gt excess CO2E relative to strict climate policy scenarios
Incentives would have promoted avoidance of biogenic methane emissions and would have shut out clean hydrogen generation
45Q (carbon capture)
Incentivizing carbon capture in dirty plants
Additional finance stream will cause dirty plants to run for longer and more actively, causing more CO2 emissions