This book analyzes the relationship between large-scale industrial activity and the carbon footprint, and provides a theoretical framework and tools to calculate the carbon footprint of industrial activities at every stage of their life cycles, including urban-planning master plans, recycling activities, project and building stages as well as managing and manufacturing. Discussing the main preventative and corrective measures that can be utilized, it includes case studies, reports on technological developments and examples of successful policies to provide inspiration to readers. This book collects the contributions of authors from four continents, in order to analyze from as many as possible points of view and using many different approaches, the problem of sustainability in today’s globalized world.
Environmental Carbon Footprints: Industrial Case Studies provides a wide range of industrial case-studies, beginning with textiles, energy systems and bio-fuels. Each footprint is associated with background information, scientific consensus and the reason behind its invention, methodological framework, assessment checklist, calculation tool/technique, applications, challenges and limitations. More importantly, applications of each indicator/framework in various industrial sectors and their associated challenges are presented. As case studies are the most flexible of all research designs, this book allows researchers to retain the holistic characteristics of real-life events while investigating empirical events. - Includes case studies from various industries, such as textiles, energy systems and conventional and bio-fuels - Provides the calculation tool/technique, applications, challenges and limitations for determining carbon footprints on an industry by industry basis - Presents the background information, scientific consensus and reason behind each case study
In the quest to mitigate the buildup of greenhouse gases in Earth's atmosphere, researchers and policymakers have increasingly turned their attention to techniques for capturing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, either from the locations where they are emitted or directly from the atmosphere. Once captured, these gases can be stored or put to use. While both carbon storage and carbon utilization have costs, utilization offers the opportunity to recover some of the cost and even generate economic value. While current carbon utilization projects operate at a relatively small scale, some estimates suggest the market for waste carbon-derived products could grow to hundreds of billions of dollars within a few decades, utilizing several thousand teragrams of waste carbon gases per year. Gaseous Carbon Waste Streams Utilization: Status and Research Needs assesses research and development needs relevant to understanding and improving the commercial viability of waste carbon utilization technologies and defines a research agenda to address key challenges. The report is intended to help inform decision making surrounding the development and deployment of waste carbon utilization technologies under a variety of circumstances, whether motivated by a goal to improve processes for making carbon-based products, to generate revenue, or to achieve environmental goals.
Carbon footprint is one of the important environmental impacts, which has received greater attention from the public, government and media. It is one of the important topics of even any government’s agenda as well and every nation is trying its best to reduce its carbon footprint to the maximum possible extent. Every company would like to reduce the carbon footprint of its products and consumers are looking for the products which emit lower carbon emissions in their entire life cycle. Assessment of Carbon footprint for different products, processes and services and also carbon labelling of products have become familiar topics in the recent past in various industrial sectors. Every industry has its unique assessment and modelling techniques, allocation procedures, mitigation methods and labelling strategies for its carbon emissions. With this background, this book has been framed with dedicated chapters on carbon footprint assessment on various industrial sectors. In each chapter, details pertaining to the assessment methodologies of carbon footprint followed in a particular industry, challenges in calculating the carbon footprint, case studies of various products in that particular industry, mitigation measures to be followed to trim down the carbon footprint, recommendations for further research are discussed in detail. This first volume includes the carbon footprint assessment methodology of agricultural sector, telecommunication sector, food sector, ceramic industry, packaging industry, building and construction sector and solid waste sector.
This book discusses the concepts, methods and case studies pertaining to Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) based Carbon Footprint Assessment. It covers chapters on Carbon Footprint Assessment with LCA methodology & case studies on carbon footprint calculation following the LCA approach on power plants in India, Impacts of Vehicle Incidents On CO2 Emissions and school buildings in India.
This book is a uniquely pedagogical while still comprehensive state-of-the-art description of LCA-methodology and its broad range of applications. The five parts of the book conveniently provide: I) the history and context of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with its central role as quantitative and scientifically-based tool supporting society’s transitioning towards a sustainable economy; II) all there is to know about LCA methodology illustrated by a red-thread example which evolves as the reader advances; III) a wealth of information on a broad range of LCA applications with dedicated chapters on policy development, prospective LCA, life cycle management, waste, energy, construction and building, nanotechnology, agrifood, transport, and LCA-related concepts such as footprinting, ecolabelling,design for environment, and cradle to cradle. IV) A cookbook giving the reader recipes for all the concrete actions needed to perform an LCA. V) An appendix with an LCA report template, a full example LCA report serving as inspiration for students who write their first LCA report, and a more detailed overview of existing LCIA methods and their similarities and differences.
This book presents specialised methods and tools built on classical LCA. In the first book-length overview, their importance for the further growth and application of LCA is demonstrated for some of the most prominent species of this emerging trend: Carbon footprinting; Water footprinting; Eco-efficiency assessment; Resource efficiency assessment; Input-output and hybrid LCA; Material flow analysis; Organizational LCA. Carbon footprinting was a huge driver for the market expansion of simplified LCA. The discussions led to an ample proliferation of different guidelines and standards including ISO/TS 14067 on Carbon Footprint of Product. Atsushi Inaba (Kogakuin University, Tokyo, Japan) and his eight co-authors provide an up-to-date status of Carbon Footprint of Products. The increasing relevance of Water Footprinting and the diverse methods were the drivers to develop the ISO 14046 as international water footprint standard. Markus Berger (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany), Stephan Pfister (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) and Masaharu Motoshita (Agency of Industrial Science and Technology, Tsukuba, Japan) present a status of water resources and demands from a global and regional perspective. A core part is the discussion and comparison of the different water footprint methods, databases and tools. Peter Saling from BASF SE in Ludwigshafen, Germany, broadens the perspective towards Eco-efficiency Assessment. He describes the BASF-specific type of eco-efficiency analysis plus adaptions like the so-called SEEBALANCE and AgBalance applications. Laura Schneider, Vanessa Bach and Matthias Finkbeiner (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany) address multi-dimensional LCA perspectives in the form of Resource Efficiency Assessment. Research needs and proposed methodological developments for abiotic resource efficiency assessment, and especially for the less developed area of biotic resources, are discussed.The fundamentals ofInput-output and Hybrid LCA are covered by Shinichiro Nakamura (Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan) and Keisuke Nansai (National Institute for Environmental Studies, Tsukuba, Japan). The concepts of environmentally extended IO, different types of hybrid IO-LCA and the waste model are introduced. David Laner and Helmut Rechberger (Vienna University of Technology, Austria) present the basic terms and procedures of Material Flow Analysismethodology. The combination of MFA and LCA is discussed as a promising approach for environmental decision support. Julia Martínez-Blanco (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany; now at Inèdit, Barcelona, Spain), Atsushi Inaba (Kogakuin University, Tokyo, Japan) and Matthias Finkbeiner (Technische Universität Berlin, Germany) introduce a recent development which could develop a new trend, namely the LCA of Organizations.
Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (ELCA) that was developed about three decades ago demands a broadening of its scope to include lifecycle costing and social aspects of life cycle assessment as well, drawing on the three-pillar or ‘triple bottom line’ model of sustainability, which is the result of the development of the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA). LCSA refers to the evaluation of all environmental, social and economic negative impacts and benefits in decision-making processes towards more sustainable products throughout their life cycle. Combination of environmental and social life cycle assessments along with life cycle costing leads to life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA). This book highlights various aspects of life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA).
Environmental life cycle assessment is often thought of as cradle to grave and therefore as the most complete accounting of the environmental costs and benefits of a product or service. However, as anyone who has done an environmental life cycle assessment knows, existing tools have many problems: data is difficult to assemble and life cycle studies take months of effort. A truly comprehensive analysis is prohibitive, so analysts are often forced to simply ignore many facets of life cycle impacts. But the focus on one aspect of a product or service can result in misleading indications if that aspect is benign while other aspects pollute or are otherwise unsustainable. This book summarizes the EIO-LCA method, explains its use in relation to other life cycle assessment models, and provides sample applications and extensions of the model into novel areas. A final chapter explains the free, easy-to-use software tool available on a companion website. (www.eiolca.net) The software tool provides a wealth of data, summarizing the current U.S. economy in 500 sectors with information on energy and materials use, pollution and greenhouse gas discharges, and other attributes like associated occupational deaths and injuries. The joint project of twelve faculty members and over 20 students working together over the past ten years at the Green Design Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, the EIO-LCA has been applied to a wide range of products and services. It will prove useful for research, industry, and in economics, engineering, or interdisciplinary classes in green design.
This book provides insight into the Life Cycle Management (LCM) concept and the progress in its implementation. LCM is a management concept applied in industrial and service sectors to improve products and services, while enhancing the overall sustainability performance of business and its value chains. In this regard, LCM is an opportunity to differentiate through sustainability performance on the market place, working with all departments of a company such as research and development, procurement and marketing, and to enhance the collaboration with stakeholders along a company’s value chain. LCM is used beyond short-term business success and aims at long-term achievements by minimizing environmental and socio-economic burden, while maximizing economic and social value.
