Agenda Product and technology assessment

Agenda
Product and technology assessment
Life Cycle Assessment

Product and technology assessment (PATA)
It is a systematic assessment of primary, secondary, and tertiary impacts of products and technologies with respect to:
Health
Safety
Environment &
Society
That covers the life cycle from raw materials to final disposal.

PATA is used for:
Designing regulations and guidelines;
Approving new products & technologies;
Designing & improving products;
Making purchasing decisions.

Sources and perspectives of PATA
Science, engineering, technology
Economics and finance
Political, cultural and social sources
Ideological & political thought
Religious organisations.
PATA is a process that relies on a set of different assessment approaches, in particular, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). PATA differs from LCA by including health, safety, social and cultural factors and by not having an established methodology.
Other tools in the set include: Risk Management, Environmental Impact Assessment, Human Factors, and Environmental Communications.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA)
An LCA is an assessment of the environmental effects a product or service has during its lifetime, from cradle to grave.
In an LCA all the important processes during the products lifecycle is included.
An LCA can for example be used for assessing how much greenhouse gas is emitted to the environment during the production of one litre milk.

Understanding a life-cycle approach
Exploring eco-efficiency

Did you know…
Producing one ton of recycled steel saves the energy equivalent of 3.6 barrels of oil and 1.5 tons of iron ore, compared to the production of new steel?
Producing paper using a chlorine-free process uses between 20 and 25 percent less water than conventional chlorine-based paper production processes?

Learning objectives
Recognize where products come from and where they go after use = life-cycle
Think about a product’s impacts on the environment and economy throughout
Qualify impacts
Quantify impacts

Structure

Phases in a Life Cycle Assessment

Worldwatch Institute, Worldwatch Paper 166: Purchasing Power: Harnessing Institutional Procurement for People and the Planet, July 2003, www.worldwatch.org

Life-cycle stages
Products can be evaluated through each stage of their life-cycle:
Extraction or acquisition of raw materials
Manufacturing and processing
Distribution and transportation
Use and reuse
Recycling
Disposal
For each stage, identify inputs of materials and energy received; outputs of useful product and waste emissions
Find optimal points for improvement –
eco-efficiency

A life-cycle approach
Ensures companies identify the multiple environmental and resource issues across the entire life-cycle of the product
Knowledge of these issues informs business activities:
planning, procurement, design, marketing & sales
Rather than just looking at the amount of waste that ends up in a landfill or an incinerator, a life-cycle approach identifies energy use, material inputs and waste generated from the time raw materials are obtained to the final disposal of the product *
* Product Life-Cycle Analysis: Environmental activities for the classroom, Waste Management and Research Center, Champaign, IL, 1999

Estimated amount of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides it takes to produce the cotton for a conventional pair of jeans.
Source: “The Organic Cotton Site: Ten good reasons”
Identifying issues at each life-cycle stage

Worldwatch Institute, Worldwatch Paper 166: Purchasing Power: Harnessing Institutional Procurement for People and the Planet, July 2003, www.worldwatch.org
Pesticides
Finishing chemicals

Life-cycle – identify the boundaries

Life cycle of print products

Life-cycle – helps avoid shifting the issues
Looking at the entire life-cycle helps ensure reducing waste at one point does not simply create more waste at another point in the life-cycle
Issues may be shifted – intentionally or inadvertently – among:
Processes or manufacturing sites
Geographic location
Different budgets and planning cycles (first cost)
Environmental media – air, water, soil
Sustainability dimension: economic, social, environmental burdens
Depends on “boundaries”
Be conscious of what is shifted and to where!

Methyl tertiary butyl ether - MTBE

Methyl tertiary butyl ether - MTBE

US Geological Survey, http://www.nwrc.usgs.gov/world/content/water1.html

Different products have impacts at different life-cycle stages

Life-cycle – identify issues and costs
Purchase Price
Refrigerator A appears cheaper
Price + Life-Cycle Costs
Refrigerator B costs less overall
Refrigerator A
Refrigerator B
Refrigerator A
Refrigerator B
$
$
Disposal & Post-Disposal
Use
Acquisition
Acquisition

A life-cycle approach
With a life-cycle approach, companies employ the tools they need to:
Reduce impacts across the life-cycle
Capitalize on opportunities for their business
Tools range from simple mapping of life-cycle stages to comprehensive quantitative assessments

Life-cycle assessment
LCA is a tool to systematically measure the environmental impacts associated with each stage of a product’s life-cycle

Life-cycle assessment
Assessment of relative impacts across life-cycle –
3 issues are included

Life-cycle assessment
Two attributes make LCA distinct and useful as an analytical tool:
whole system consideration of the total product
life-cycle
presentation of tradeoffs among multiple environmental issues
LCA is quantitative

How to do LCA
Determine scope and system boundaries
functional unit
life-cycle stages
define “unit processes”
Data collection
Analysis of inputs and outputs
Assessment of numerous environmental issues
Interpretation
LCA principles and framework are standardized by the Organization for International Standardization’s 14040 series of standards (ISO14040)

Conclusions – why take a life-cycle approach?
Systems perspective
Integrates environment into core business issues
Efficiency
Innovation
Better return on investment – identify point of “biggest bang for the buck” *
Engage stakeholders – investors, customers, employees
Environment is not a cost center for the company, but a business opportunity
* www.ciwmb.ca.gov/EPP/LifeCycle/default.htm

Conclusions – why take a life-cycle approach?
Systems perspective
Integrates environment into core business issues
Efficiency
Innovation
Better return on investment
Engage stakeholders
Environment is not a cost center for the company, but a business opportunity
Look beyond the company’s gate
Expose trade-offs and and opportunities
Expand analysis of products, projects, policies and programs – what is the function, what are the boundaries, what are the impacts, where are the opportunities?

Purpose of LCAs
A company can use LCAs for several purposes:
To give the company an overview of the environmental impacts internally, which gives the company foundation for making environmental improvements and thereby decreasing their environmental impacts.
To put pressure on the company's suppliers to make more environmentally friendly raw materials.
In marketing, where the company can market one or more of their products on its environmental profile or they can market their products compared to other similar products on the market.
In product development phase, eco-design. In eco-design an LCA can be used for assessing the possible environmental impacts from a product that is under development. The LCA results can this way be used to change parameters in the product or the production here of.

Example: Solar Energy

Background – Photovoltaics (PV)
Converts light directly to electricity
Created in 1950s for satellite use
Vanguard I, 1958
Use on land began in 1970s
Most widely known and adopted solar technology today
Source: Total.com

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA)
Traditional evaluations only consider the “use” phase of life
More accurate and comprehensive analyses consider a product "from cradle to grave”
Each phase of life factors into the LCA:
Raw Material Acquisition
Manufacturing
Transport
Use/Maintenance
Recycle/Waste Management

Life Cycle Analysis
Source: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

R = f ( H x E )
Risk, R
Hazard, H
Exposure, E
Major hazards in PV manufacturing
Requires the use of rare-earth metals, of which China controls 95% of the market
Production undergoing rapid outsourcing to developing countries
No well-established PV recycling program
Life Cycle Analysis – Photovoltaics
Source: Brookhaven National Laboratory

Life Cycle Analysis –
Concentrating Solar Power (CSP)
Composed mainly of common metals, glass, concrete, and HTF
Thermal hazard
Requires higher intensity solar radiation than PV
Allows for integrated energy storage
Source: Sandia National Laboratory

Life Cycle Analysis – CSP
Source: National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Thermal energy storage allows for decoupling of energy collection and electricity generation

Photovoltaics
10-15% efficient (commercially)
Advanced battery technology still in development
Converts light directly to electricity
Toxic feedstocks and waste
More practical on a small scale
Concentrating Solar Power
40-70% efficiency
Integrated energy storage
Converts light directly to heat
Simpler and more benign materials
Most practical on a large, utility scale
Life Cycle Analysis – Comparison