Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
Methodology Guidelines for the
Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
November 2010
Authors:
Nigel Howard and David Sharp
Acknowledgements
The project team wishes to thank and acknowledge the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and
Research and the Industry Cooperative Innovation Programme for their funding support of this pivotal
project for Australian construction materials and products. The team also wishes to thank and
acknowledge the Building Product Innovation Council (BPIC), contributing members and their member
companies. We appreciate their foresight and leadership in coming together to both fund and embark on
this complex and pioneering path to establish a comprehensive, robust and authoritative environmental
assessment of building design and material/product specification. The project team also wishes to thank
and acknowledge our colleagues and volunteers engaged in all sectors of AusLCI and ALCAS who are
promoting the use of LCA in Australia.
“This report was produced in cooperation with the Australian Life Cycle Assessment Society (ALCAS), but
should not be taken as representing the views of ALCAS and its members.”
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
List of Acronyms
AusLCI
Australian Life Cycle Inventory
BASIX
Building Sustainability Index
BPIC
Building Products Innovation Council
EPD
Environmental Product Declarations
ET
Evapotranspiration
GHG
Greenhouse Gas
GWP
Global Warming Potential
IPCC
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
LCA
Life Cycle Assessment
LCI
Life Cycle Inventory
LCIA
Life Cycle Impact Assessment
ODP
Ozone Depletion Potential
ODS
Ozone Depleting Substance
SDS
Sustainable Design Scorecard
Preface
This document is adapted from the May 2008 – AusLCI Guidelines Committee Draft –
Guidelines for Data Development for an Australian Life Cycle Inventory Database.
The adaptations reflect the consensus from the Technical Working Group meetings of
the BPIC contributing member associations on Life Cycle Inventory/Life Cycle
Assessment (LCI/LCA) methodology conducted through January 2008 to March 2010.
This document should be read in conjunction with the BPIC’s Protocol and Rules for
the Correct Use of Australian Life Cycle Inventory Data for Construction Materials and
Products.
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
Contents
1
INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................. 6
2
BACKGROUND ................................................................................................................................ 6
3
GOAL AND SCOPE DEFINITION ........................................................................................................ 8
3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
PROPOSED GOAL FOR INVENTORY DEVELOPMENT ....................................................................................... 8
THE BPIC/ICIP LCA PROTOCOL .............................................................................................................. 9
AUSLCI ADMINISTRATION....................................................................................................................... 9
AUSLCI CONSIDERATIONS ....................................................................................................................... 9
4
COMPLIANCE WITH ISO 14044 ...................................................................................................... 10
5
BOUNDARIES ................................................................................................................................ 10
5.1
5.2
6
UNIT PROCESS DATA DEVELOPMENT ............................................................................................ 12
6.1
6.2
6.3
6.4
7
GENERAL DESCRIPTION ........................................................................................................................ 10
UNIT PROCESSES ................................................................................................................................. 12
AGGREGATION AND AVERAGING ............................................................................................................ 13
GENERIC DATA REPRESENTATIVENESS AND TIMELINESS .............................................................................. 13
INVENTORY DATA GAPS INCLUDING FROM OVERSEAS PRODUCTION .............................................................. 14
EXCLUSION OF SMALL AMOUNTS ........................................................................................................... 15
DATA TYPES .................................................................................................................................. 17
7.1
7.2
7.3
PRIMARY VS SECONDARY ...................................................................................................................... 17
UNITS ............................................................................................................................................... 17
TECHNOLOGY ..................................................................................................................................... 17
8
IMPACT ASSESSMENT CATEGORIES .............................................................................................. 18
9
CARBON CYCLE ............................................................................................................................. 19
10
WATER CYCLE ............................................................................................................................... 20
11
COMMON ENERGY AND TRANSPORTATION MODULES ................................................................ 22
11.1
12
SEQUESTERED ENERGY SOURCES ....................................................................................................... 24
DATA FORMAT AND COMMUNICATION ....................................................................................... 24
12.1
12.2
12.3
TRANSPARENCY .............................................................................................................................. 24
DATA QUALITY AND UNCERTAINTY .................................................................................................... 25
SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS...................................................................................................................... 26
13
CRITICAL REVIEW .......................................................................................................................... 26
14
CO-PRODUCT ALLOCATION ........................................................................................................... 27
14.1
14.2
14.3
14.4
14.5
14.6
15
THE NEED FOR ALLOCATION ............................................................................................................. 27
COMPLIANCE WITH ISO 14044 FOR ALLOCATION................................................................................ 27
GOAL AND SCOPE OF AUSLCI AND ALLOCATION ................................................................................... 28
CASE FOR ECONOMIC ALLOCATION .................................................................................................... 29
END OF LIFE IMPACTS FOR THE FULL LIFE CYCLE.................................................................................... 30
ECONOMIC ALLOCATION AND RECOVERY (RECYCLING REUSE AND WASTE DERIVED FUELS) .......................... 31
CHARACTERISATION ..................................................................................................................... 32
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
16
NORMALISATION .......................................................................................................................... 34
17
WEIGHTING .................................................................................................................................. 34
18
DOCUMENTATION OF LIFE CYCLE INVENTORIES ........................................................................... 35
19
REFERENCES .................................................................................................................................. 36
APPENDIX A: BPIC MEMBER GENERIC PROCESS DIAGRAMS................................................................... 40
APPENDIX B: BPIC MEMBER PRODUCTS AND FUNCTIONAL UNITS ......................................................... 52
APPENDIX C: CONVERSION FACTORS ..................................................................................................... 55
APPENDIX D: STREAMLINED DATA PROTOCOL ....................................................................................... 57
Figures
Figure 1: Schematic overview of Midpoint Impact Categories and Damage Categories.............................. 33
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
1 Introduction
This methodology is part of a set of documents and resources developed for the
BPIC/ICIP LCI project as follows:
1. Level Playing Field Methodology Guidelines for the Construction Materials and
Building Products Life Cycle Inventory Database (BPIC/LCI Methodology
Guidelines).
2. Protocol for the Correct Use of Australian Life Cycle Inventory Data for
Construction Materials and Products (Protocol for Correct Use of BPIC/LCI Data in
Life Cycle Assessments).
3. Life Cycle Environmental Impact Assessment for the Correct Use of Australian Life
Cycle Inventory Data for Construction Materials and Products.
4. Weighting of Environmental Impact Categories for Assessing Construction
Materials and Products.
5. Database of generic average lifecycle data for Australian building and
construction materials and products.
6. BPIC Building Product Maintenance and Replacement Life Database.
7. A web based portal providing access to all of the resources above.
This report describes the first of these items – the materials and building products
sector’s position as represented by BPIC’s contributing members on the development
of Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data guidelines for the Australian LCI Project and
Database (AusLCI).
2
Background
The objective of the AusLCI project is to develop publicly available LCI data modules
for commonly used, generic materials, products and processes. It is important to
support public, private and non-profit sector efforts to undertake product Life Cycle
Assessments (LCAs) and LCA based decision support systems and tools such as
ecolabels.
Through the initiative of the BPIC’s contributing members and their member
companies’ engagement in this project, the Australian building and construction
material and product sectors are in the vanguard of the AusLCI project.
It is important for the construction material and product sector to show such
leadership because:
The construction sector draws on materials and products from every industrial
sector, and it is therefore especially important that the selection of competing
materials and products using LCA is based on a consistent level playing field
methodology.
Buildings are very long-lived with many replacements of some components
over this life, and with implications for cleaning, repair, maintenance and
refurbishment in the long term.
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
Material and product choices for buildings have long-term implications for the
operational energy, water and wastes generated over their long life and they
create the internal environment that houses people. These operational
implications are the largest cause of human environmental impacts, with
transport the second largest.
According to a Australian Greenhouse Office sponsored study by RMIT in
December 2006 entitled Scoping Study to Investigate Measures for Improving
the Environmental Sustainability of Building Materials, buildings account for
39% of the normalised annual minerals depletion and 42% of the normalised
solid waste impacts. In bulk materials terms, concrete, steel, aluminium and
brick are typically the most significant contributors to construction impacts.
Solving methodological problems to encompass this breadth of issues for
construction materials and products should provide a methodology that is similarly
consistent and applicable in most if not all other sectors.
The project team believe that this is a very important step for Australia that will
place the Australian construction material and building products industries in a
world-leading position of environmental assessment, innovation, continuous
improvement, and appropriate and fair recognition of environmental performance
and declaration.
Probably the biggest concern for BPIC contributing members, and associated
companies, is that the data from this project is used correctly and appropriately once
published. This includes especially any tools, methods, ecoprofiles and ecolabels that
draw from the data.
The principal abuse of life cycle data is for it to be used in isolation outside of a full
LCA of functionally equivalent alternative products, systems, assemblies or whole
buildings. Common examples of data misuse include:
per tonne comparisons of materials where very different tonnages of the
materials are used for the particular application e.g. building structural frames
failure to account for materials impacts on operational energy over the life
e.g. external wall comparisons that ignore thermal insulation and thermal
mass properties
failure to recognise the recyclability of a material at the end of a building’s life
failure to consider the maintenance implications of alternatives e.g. ignoring
vacuum cleaning of carpets compared to washing of alternatives
failure to adequately account for the environmental impacts of products in the
pre-production and production stage
manipulation of building life to reduce the average yearly impact of building
materials
failure to differentiate between fossil and biogenic sources of carbon
emissions
failure to recognise the environmental impacts of transport
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
using inputs and outputs as measures of actual impact
using overseas data that has no relevance to Australia.
This project therefore includes the writing of a companion document, the BPIC’s
Protocol and Rules for the Correct Use of the BPIC Australian Life Cycle Inventory
Data for LCA Assessments, and LCA based tools, ecolabels and environmental
product declarations. It is important that data is collected and documented up-front
in ways that will be compatible with the goal and scope of these LCAs, as well as
with the AusLCI requirements for the LCIs.
It is hoped and expected that the best tools (using the data in the most appropriate
ways) will attract the support of the industry and be seen as most credible to
industry, the construction sector and government, and marginalise and discredit
inappropriate or misrepresentative abuses of the data.
This guideline will therefore be used for two major purposes:
3
1
To establish the construction material and building product sector’s
position on LCI and LCA methodology and use this position as input into
the design of AusLCI.
2
As background and context to the development of an LCA protocol that
will inform the appropriate and correct use of the data once published.
Goal and Scope Definition
3.1 Proposed Goal for Inventory Development
The overall goal of the AusLCI project is to establish and maintain LCI modules that
can be readily accessed, combined and augmented to develop more complex LCIs
and LCAs.
The goals of the BPIC/ICIP project participants were collated from the presentations
of each group at a 17 July 2008 meeting.
Consistent with the goals of the AusLCI Database project, the materials and building
products sector goals include:
consistent level playing field methodology and data
independent, authoritative and recognised basis for product comparisons
ISO14044 Compliance for International Recognition.
In addition, the sector goals include:
that data for imports track upstream to cradle and do not assume Australian
data as the proxy
that allocated and unallocated inventories are provided (allowing for the
broadest application of the data)
that the methodology is scientifically based
that the data are appropriately climate relevant
that the impact assessment considers the full range of impacts identified in
Section 7 Data Types.
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
3.2 The BPIC/ICIP LCA Protocol
Many of the aspirations of the construction industry stakeholders within the AusLCI
project can only be realised in the uses of the LCI data within wider scope LCAs for
assemblies, building elements, and whole buildings and the tools and assessment
methods that derive from the data. Further consideration of goal and scope issues
for the correct use of the data is provided in the protocol.
3.3 AusLCI Administration
BPIC contributing members and associated companies are also concerned about the
ownership, administration and access of the AusLCI data expressed in the following
goal statements:
data must be third party reviewed and assessed by competent practitioners
data should be accessible and easy to use, but by approved users
administered by the Government or not-for-profit organisation.
There is a potential conflict between the need to have registered users as indicated
by BPIC contributing members and the AusLCI objective of having open access data.
3.4 AusLCI Considerations
The type of materials and processes which are to be included in AusLCI will be:
1. Those of interest to the sponsors, participants and users of AusLCI.
2. Those background processes that are needed and are environmentally
significant in the supply chain of the materials and processes of interest.
Typically these “background” processes include energy, transport, basic materials,
chemicals and manufacturing operations. The aim of the project is for all significant
background processes to be included so that only data from AusLCI are used in their
inventories. Initially however, it may not be practicable to obtain comprehensive
data for all sectors and other sources may be needed to prime the AusLCI initiative.
It is expected that users of the database are most likely to comprise the following:
developers and users of LCA practitioner tools (e.g. SimaPro, GABI) where the
users of the tools have a high level of expertise in LCA
developers of tools for the design of buildings (e.g. BAMS, LCA Design) and
other infrastructure where the tool users (architects, engineers) are non-LCA
experts
developers of Type III Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) and
ecolabels where the developers of the EPDs and ecolabels may have LCA
expertise, but the users are non-LCA experts
manufacturers, researchers, policy analysts and others undertaking LCAs of
specific products or processes.
The majority of users are expected to use the database indirectly through the use of
the derived tools, ecolabels and EPDs. This may be further promoted if credits for
use of these tools are included in green building rating tools and/or green
procurement guidelines. These may be still further promoted if incentivised by
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
governments or even mandated in building codes and planning regulations, e.g.
BASIX (Building Sustainability Index) and SDS (Sustainable Design Scorecard).
Direct users of the data should only use the data in the context of a full LCA. They
should only draw comparisons for functionally equivalent alternatives over the full
life of those alternatives, and taking account of all reasonable collateral
environmental impacts arising between the alternatives.
Because the potential uses of the LCI data are very broad, data quality standards
must be as high as practically possible. The data should also be documented for
transparency so that users can ensure that they are using the data appropriately.
The data developed in the generic inventories will be compiled using an
“attributional” approach which seeks to establish the burdens associated with the
production and use of a product, or with a specific service or process, at a point in
time (typically in the recent past). The data will not be compiled as “consequential”
LCAs, which seek to forecast the future environmental consequences of a decision or
a proposed change in a system under study. However, since the data will be
provided as generic inventory data for unit processes, as well as “cradle-to-gate”
system process data and documented for transparency, the data will be appropriate
for consequential LCA studies.
4
Compliance with ISO 14044
All data compiled under the auspices of this project must comply with this
methodology and hence with the requirements of ISO 14044. If for any reason data
is provided on a basis that cannot for some reason comply with any requirement of
this standard, the data providers must fully declare and explain any departure and
its expected consequences. Data that is not compliant with ISO14044 may not be
accepted for entry into the BPIC/ICIP database or the AusLCI database.
5
Boundaries
5.1 General Description
A fundamental principle of LCA (and LCI) is that there must be a mass and energy
balance between what flows into any process or system and what flows out as
product, co-product, waste and pollution. It is therefore essential to define a clear
boundary around the process or system under study. The system boundary must be
aligned to the goal and scope defined for the process, system, product or service
under consideration.
In this project, the goal is defined in terms of unit process LCIs. Each of these unit
processes can be thought of as LCA building blocks or modules, so that the LCIs for
compatible unit processes can be combined to produce an LCI of wider scope, or
many can be combined to produce a full LCA. In doing so, a new system boundary
can always be drawn to encompass this wider scope.
The practitioner must ensure that only LCIs that fit completely within this system
boundary are accounted for in their contribution to the new LCI/LCA, and that there
are no significant overlaps or gaps in data provision between the added processes.
For example, two sequential processes may be added together, but if transport is
required to link the processes, this must also be included. However, if transport is
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
already accounted in both unit processes, then it must be excluded from one to avoid
an overlap in system boundaries and double counting of the impacts.
The boundaries for each LCI in this project will therefore be determined on a caseby-case basis. All unit processes will be compiled as “gate-to-gate” processes, but for
some primary materials (quarrying, mining, forestry, water, oil and gas extraction
processes), the main primary resources may be won from inside the process
boundary gate. For the production of renewable resources, the boundary must
include the establishment and growth processes. Most unit processes will draw on
upstream energy, water, material and product supply unit processes together with
their attendant transport or transmission processes.
Whatever the scope adopted, this must be unambiguously defined with a process
diagram and a boundary drawn to show which processes are included or excluded.
To be most useful to industry and practitioners compiling LCI data, the AusLCI
database will also include a number of generic transformation processes. These may
include typical manufacturing, finishing or end of life processes (e.g. extruding,
stamping, painting, shredding, baling and incineration) that would be applicable to a
wide range of full LCI/LCA studies of specific products. These transformation
processes will also need to be documented with a system boundary to enable correct
use.
Boundaries will also need to be established for many service processes, the most
important example being transport. Here the boundary may be defined in terms of
the process and its outcome (e.g. tonne.kilometres of product transported,
m3.kilometres of product transported if volume rather than mass determines the
transport requirement), rather than in terms of a physical or temporal boundary. In
this case, shared transport between shared outgoing loads, or with return loads, may
need to be considered in addition to accounting for empty return journeys.
For this project, transport of the raw materials and other products and services that
come as inputs to the system boundary (input gate) will generally be considered the
responsibility of the supplier. The material/product/service supplier will then
generally take responsibility for (and include within their own boundary) all
downstream transport to distribute their products to end users or to intermediate
retailers. If intermediate retailers are involved, then they will need to be separately
engaged in AusLCI to account for their operations and transport implications.
The data will be provided in two forms: first, at the producer’s outwards goods gate
(to allow alternative transport assumptions to be used); and, second, at either a
distribution hub or at the customer’s premises including an average estimate of
transport. The assumptions must be documented. A separate distribution model may
be needed for transport from the distribution centre to the final customer.
Some products are distributed on a supply and install basis and inventories may be
provided on this basis for these products. The basis must be documented.
Appendix A shows the generic system processes (unit processes) and system
boundaries for each of the product categories contributing to the BPIC/ICIP project.
Appendix B shows the range of products represented and the corresponding
functional unit(s) that the data will be presented in.
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
5.2 Unit Processes
The chosen unit processes must be relevant, practical and appropriate to the project
goal and scope defined for the materials, products or services being measured. They
may include processes for the:












6
exploration, extraction (from earth, air, water or sea), concentration
(beneficiation), storage, transport of raw materials (including construction
and earth-moving to gain access to a raw material and all emissions from
these operations)
growth and regrowth of biomass products or energy sources
acquisition, storage and transfer of energy
processing of raw materials into primary products (e.g. steel, glass, cement,
aggregates, timber)
transformation of primary products into secondary products (e.g. steel joists,
corrugated cardboard boxes)
incineration with or without energy recovery
recycling and recovery of waste materials and other end of life unit processes
disposal to landfill or by other means
transportation of materials, fuels and products at all stages
transport of people – this is usually excluded from the scope of manufacturing
processes to produce products, but might be an important consideration in
the planning of transport infrastructure and urban developments
pollution control processes that are not an integral part of the industrial
processes under study (e.g. a central waste water treatment plant)
construction and maintenance of plant, vehicles and machinery used for any
phase of production.
Unit Process Data Development
Descriptions of industrial processes can be obtained and aggregated at different
levels of complexity and extent. ISO 14044 defines a unit process as the “smallest
portion of a product system for which data are collected when performing a life-cycle
assessment”. The model of an entire supply chain will generally contain data for unit
processes at various physical scales. Provided the system boundary remains intact
and all flows across the boundary are correctly accounted, then a wide variety of
scales of processes can be consistently and appropriately measured.
For this project, the goal is to obtain data for unit process modules that represent
subsets of an industry so that users of the data can understand and combine various
components of a product system and reviewers can verify the quality of the data.
Higher levels of aggregation of data (e.g. defining a unit process to include more
activities) will result in a loss of information, reduce the level of transparency, and
inhibit data quality review. In addition, some components of a product system, such
as limestone quarrying, are used in many applications. Defining that type of activity
as a separate unit process will eliminate the need to conduct multiple assessments of
the same data.
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
For the BPIC/ICIP project, it is accepted that each contributing member is best able
to determine how to define its products, the appropriate functional unit and its unit
process at the appropriate level of detail to meet the needs of the industry and users
of the data (and to permit appropriate and representative averaging of data between
companies to protect confidential data).
6.1 Aggregation and Averaging
In order to protect the confidentiality of individual company’s data, it will be essential
to aggregate data from several sources into anonymous generic averages that are
nonetheless representative of the Australian industry.
Data can be horizontally averaged, whereby the average inventory for each of the
individual sub-processes in an inventory are averaged and the sum of these then
represents the inventory for the whole. This is preferred by AusLCI because it
preserves a lot of data richness with a wealth of averaged generic processes that can
be used to compare between similar processes from different industries. It can even
be used as a proxy process in another sector to fill a non-critical data gap. This data
richness also has advantages for the industry in being able to see which parts of
their processes contribute most potently to the impacts of their products, and hence
how best to innovate to mitigate those impacts.
It is acknowledged that due to the requirement for additional metering this may not
always be the most practical approach.
Alternatively, data can be vertically averaged, where each data provider produces
the entire inventory for their products/services and this is then averaged with the
inventories from their peers and competitors’ products/services. This is likely to be
the preferred approach for most BPIC/ICIP contributors since it allows each company
to keep its specific company data confidential, nominating an independent third party
to collect each company’s data and determine the average results.
In determining the average generic performance, the reasons for any data outliers
(from plant/processes which perform particularly well or badly) will be investigated
to decide whether they should be legitimately included in the average. In general,
any results which lie more than 20% from the average of the group should not
contribute to the average, and must be treated as a separate class of product or
process. Where there are only small numbers of contributing results this may prove
impracticable, and any such occurrences should be documented.
6.2 Generic Data Representativeness and Timeliness
BPIC will estimate and document the extent to which data items are representative
of a market or a process, but will not exclude data that cannot achieve any particular
threshold level of representativeness. Stratified sampling of plant and processes can
be used to achieve this objective and the data used should derive from the most
recent annual production data that it is feasible to compile. The data should
represent the mean of Australian production, reflecting differing efficiencies from
plant at different ages and scales of production.
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
The data should ideally be updated at least every five years or sooner if an industry
considers significant change has occurred. In any event, the date of compilation of
the data must be documented. Some data (e.g. energy consumption and fuel mix)
may be updated annually since this may be required for statutory compliance
reasons. The industry has a vested interest in the data being appropriately up-todate because as it innovates for reduced impacts, its generic average performance
will overtake the performance reflected in the AusLCI data. The industry also has an
individual company competitiveness interest in ensuring that the generic average
data is truly representative. This is because the data also provides the benchmark
against which companies will be innovating and improving to show exemplary
performance for their specific products in ecolabels and EPDs.
6.3 Inventory Data Gaps Including from Overseas Production
For any materials, feedstocks or products for which directly measurable data may
not be available (e.g. for some imported items), the following protocol will be
adopted:
Rigorous efforts must be made to trace the impacts as they arise in the supply chain
of the materials, feedstocks or final products using the methodology described herein
(including compliance with ISO 14044), and taking account of all transport
movements and intermediate processing or fabrication processes at the locations
where they take place. For imported materials, this will also require tracking
upstream for the energy sources used in the country of production, transport
distances etc. The sources of the data and all assumptions made must be rigorously
documented. Ecoinvent data and overseas databases are emerging that can be
investigated for sources of missing data.
In cases where relevant data is unavailable, the supply chain will be modelled using
process data that represents a precautionary worst case of Australian production
technologies. For imported items, these data will then be adapted where possible to
mimic the origin countries energy supplies, transport and operations (e.g. adjusting
transportation distances and modes, and electricity generation fuel mix, calorific
value and the emission profile of available solid fuel resources etc). Where such
adaptations are undertaken, all assumptions and departures from the actual
inventories for these items must be fully documented.
Transportation energy and associated emissions will be included for imports based on
the actual location of production, hauling distances and typical modes of
transportation. Imported material/product inventories should be identified for their
source and distinguished from domestic production.
BPIC’s contributing members and associated companies consider that where
this methodology is used to determine the achievement of an ecolabel for
any product (whether imported or domestically produced):
1. Rigorous efforts must be made to trace the representative LCI
data/impacts as they arise in the supply chain of the materials,
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
feedstocks or final products using the approach described in this
methodology;
or where that is not possible,
2. The supply chain is modelled using typical process data that can be
demonstrated to be relevant to that product and source location e.g
Ecoinvent data. These data will then be adapted where possible to
mimic the infrastructure and operations at the point of production
and to take account of transportation as described in this
methodology:
or if this is not possible,
3. The supply chain will be modelled using process data that represents
a precautionary worst case of Australian production technologies,
documenting the basis for the “worst case” scenario. These data will
then be adapted where possible to mimic infrastructure and
operations at the point of production and to take account of
transportation as described in this methodology
4. In all cases the approach and rationale must be fully documented.
BPIC’s contributing members and associated companies consider that
imported products should not be utilising Australian data, or poorly based
assumptions on data, to represent their products.
Ecolabels shall be based on accurate information collected and evaluated in
accordance with ISO 14024 and ISO 14044 and the other parts of this
methodology.
6.4 Exclusion of Small Amounts
It is common practice in LCA/LCI protocols to propose exclusion limits for inputs and
outputs that fall below a threshold % of the total, but with the exception that where
the input/output has a “significant” impact it should be included. The problem with
this approach is that it is tautological and arbitrary. Until you have compiled the full
list of inputs and outputs you cannot know which inputs/outputs you could have
excluded.
But now that you have compiled them, why lose the information by deleting them?
How can you know if an impact is likely to be “significant” until you have compiled
the information and completed the impact assessment? Experienced practitioners
may know by experience which measures prove to be significant, and need to be
included, but LCAs frequently throw up unexpected results and test the intuition of
even the most experienced practitioners.
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
For this project the following approach will be adopted:
1. All available data for the inputs and outputs from a unit process will be
compiled and modelled to a final impact assessment for the unit process,
selecting data that is as relevant and accurate as possible:
direct measured data should be preferred over inferred or estimated data
locally appropriate data should be preferred over data from remote
sources
data for identical processes should be preferred over data from analogous
processes
recent data should be preferred over older data
at last resort, approximately estimated data should be used until the mass
and energy balance for the process is fully modelled.
2. Sensitivity analysis should then be used to test the sensitivity of the final
normalised impact to each input parameter, say by doubling and halving each
data item.
3. Provided the final impact assessment varies by less than 10% for the input
parameter being varied, then approximate values can be used. Where the
variation is greater than 10%, then further investigation of this parameter
must be undertaken. At a minimum, this sensitive data must be estimated for
an identical process, but ideally directly measured.
Consumables – cleaning materials, components of plant and equipment with high
wear rates etc – should be included initially using approximate estimates. This is
because they may prove significant in a sensitivity analysis and require more
detailed consideration.
Except for some infrastructure projects, capital equipment and buildings typically
account for under 1% of nearly all LCI parameters and this is usually much smaller
than the error in the inventory data itself. For this project, approximate estimates of
the impacts of capital equipment and buildings will be made, and provided these
contribute to less than 5% of the normalised impacts, no further elaboration will be
needed.
Studying this in detail is a major undertaking, but approximate estimates of the
average impact of industrial buildings per m2 of footprint and of industrial equipment
per tonne of equipment can usually be used to approximately estimate the capital
equipment and building contributions. Where these are clearly below the 5%
threshold, then no further investigation will be needed. This is expected to be the
case for probably all of the construction material and product sectors. (Typically it is
infrastructure projects and renewable energy projects where this is likely to be an
exception).
The impacts of employees are also usually excluded from inventory impacts on the
basis that if they were not employed for this production or service function, they
would be employed for another. It is very hard to decide what proportion of the
impacts from their whole lives should count towards their employment. For this
project, the impacts of employees are excluded.
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7
Data Types
7.1 Primary vs Secondary
There are numerous types of data that can be acquired for conducting LCI studies.
Primary data are those obtained, usually by measurement, at specific facilities.
Secondary data are those that have been inferred or estimated from other sources or
obtained from published sources. Secondary data may come from:
industry surveys
published literature
other LCI studies
emissions permits
government statistics (e.g. Australian Bureau of Statistics).
The source of all data should be identified as part of routine data documentation. The
most representative and reliable data should always be used, with the proviso that
reviewers should be able to verify that the data is current and reasonably represents
its documented unit process (see Section 11.2 Transparency).
7.2 Units
All physical data should be presented in metric (SI) units. Any economic data used
for allocation should be presented in Australian dollars together with the date and
period over which it is averaged. Where conversions are required from imperial or
non-SI units, the conversion factors provided in Appendix C must be used and the
conversion factor documented.
7.3 Technology
The intent is to develop industry average data for the range of technologies currently
in use for specific unit processes. If more than one technology is used in an industry,
data should be collected and reported separately for each technology, together with
the proportion of the market served by each technology. If it proves impossible to
produce anonymous data by averaging from plants using similar technology, then
the results can be aggregated to produce weighted average values, using the relative
contribution of each technology to the market as the weighting factors. Imported
materials and products should be separately reported and not aggregated into these
industry averages.
Where distinctly different technology pathways are used to produce the same
materials/ products/commodities, then these need to be kept distinct and not
aggregated since the average values may not then be representative of any of the
technologies. Examples include:
electricity from different pathways
steelmaking: electric arc, basic oxygen furnace, HiSmelt
blast furnace or electro-refined metals
wet or dry process cement clinker production.
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Australian average production data should also be provided in the AusLCI database,
so that users of the data can use the best average value in cases where the actual
source is unknown.
Where it is impossible or commercially impractical to differentiate a product in the
marketplace as being derived from one particular technology or another (e.g. due to
interchangeable feed or production mix within a company), then an average
percentage mix of product to the marketplace from each technology shall be
determined and presented. It needs a note about the period over which this average
is determined, how it is determined, and its likely variability e.g. for Australian
reinforcing mesh, which can be sourced from either blast furnace or electric arc
furnace steelmaking.
Data should also be provided averaged across regions in the AusLCI database so that
users can use best average regional data where commodities are predominantly
traded within local regions. For example, for:
electricity, gas and petroleum products
cement, aggregates and sand
waste management services.
For some low impact materials, transport is the dominant impact in their production
and transport distances and modes may crucially affect the LCI results with
sometimes counter-intuitive outcomes. For example, aggregates shipped long
distances by sea from coastal quarries may have lower net impacts than apparently
more local sources travelling by road haul.
All technology or region specific models should document the following information
where it is available and relevant:
location, geography, climate
technology descriptor
fuel and energy, infrastructure and transportation
any other pertinent data to assist correct and appropriate use of the data.
8
Impact Assessment Categories
In LCA, elementary flows are the flows of natural resources into a material/product
or system or the flows of emissions, wastes and pollution back into the environment.
They contribute to the environmental impacts that LCA attempts to evaluate. The
impact assessment models that are used to interpret LCA data are still emerging and
evolving internationally.
The approach taken to establish suitable environmental impact categories comprised
the following major steps:
review of 27 Australian and international impact assessment methods or best
practice guidelines
multi-criteria evaluation of available Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA)
methods and approaches.
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The separate report A Life Cycle Impact Assessment Method for the BPIC/ICIP
Project – Part 1: Classification and Characterisation 1 contains recommendations for
environmental impact categories for a midpoint LCIA method. In summary, the
following 14 environmental impact categories are recommended for impact
assessment within the BPIC/ICIP project:
1. Global warming.
2. Mineral and fossil fuel depletion (i.e. abiotic depletion).
3. Land transformation/occupation and biodiversity.
4. Water resource depletion.
5. Eutrophication.
6. Acidification.
7. Eco-toxicity.
8. Photo-chemical smog.
9. Ozone depletion.
10. Ionising radiation.
11. Human toxicity.
12. Respiratory effects.
13. Nuisance.
14. Indoor environment quality.
See Sections 15 and 16 below for more detail on characterisation and normalisation
of environmental impacts.
9
Carbon Cycle
The CO2 emissions generated by a system under study must take account of the
following relevant aspects of the carbon cycle:
sequestration of carbon in biomass and soils
emissions from combustion of fossil fuels and non-fossil fuels such as biomass
process emissions (e.g. decomposition of carbonate in a cement kiln)
emissions from landfills or other end of life processes
re-carbonisation of products originally containing carbonates, such as lime or
concrete products.
Any carbon sequestered or emitted should be carried attributionally and assigned to
the products/services throughout their life cycle. As sequestered carbon, the carbon
is accounted as CO2 sequestered – a negative emission of CO2. If any process emits
carbon (in any chemical form), the emission of the actual chemical emitted must be
recorded in the inventory. In this way, the particular species emitted can be correctly
classified for its impacts and characterised for its potency as a greenhouse gas
1
Insert hyperlink for online version of the report
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(GHG), acid gas, ozone depleting chemical, nutrient, toxicant etc. Similarly, any
waste to landfill or incineration should be accounted as the quantity and form of the
waste so that any subsequent decomposition or emissions can be correctly assessed
(e.g. directly as methane and CO2 or as a result of landfill fires or controlled
incineration).
Emissions from the combustion of fuels will be captured in common energy
combustion modules (see Section 11 Common Energy and Transportation Modules).
CO2 arising from fossil fuel combustion must be identified as “CO2, fossil” and for
non-fossil fuels, CO2 emissions should be identified as “CO2, biogenic”. For soil carbon
changes due to land use change, “CO2, land transformation” should be used. For
emissions where the source of the CO2 emissions is not known, they should be listed
simply as “CO2”. These distinctions are provided: to allow users of the data modules
to determine whether to include or exclude the emissions in GHG emission
calculations based on Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) guidelines
(biogenic emissions are typically not accounted for under the IPCC guidelines, which
are adopted in Australia at the National Greenhouse Inventory level); and to provide
additional information in the overall balancing of the carbon cycle.
Unit process data should account for sequestration of carbon as a negative emission
from the CO2 inventory, which for some products or intermediaries may result in a
negative net flow of CO2 to the atmosphere. Care will need to be taken to document
the timeframe of these emissions to ensure proper accounting over the full
timeframe of the LCA.
In the case of end of life unit process modules, GHG releases (or expected GHG
releases), including releases in the form of methane, should be accounted within the
appropriate inventory with documentation of the rationale and calculations
underlying estimates of the expected releases.
Re-carbonisation of concrete or other products slaked from carbonates is essentially
a use-phase effect that lies outside the scope of analysis for LCI modules, but should
be highlighted in the LCA protocol for use of data from this project.
10 Water Cycle
The depletion of water resources is of major concern in many parts of Australia. With
many building materials, water is most commonly consumed from the reticulated
municipal water system. Some industrial users and farmers may extract water from
their own wells and boreholes or extract water from surface sources (irrigation
canals, rivers and lakes). Some rainwater may be deliberately harvested from the
roofs of buildings for beneficial use in industrial processes. Water may also be
consumed through evaporation and this may be deliberate to promote cooling or
concentration of dissolved compounds or an unintended consequence of an
operation. In addition, water may be extracted and returned to the same watercourse, but returned at a different temperature or carrying some pollutants which
may have effects on the water-course downstream of the release.
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In the case of renewable raw materials from agricultural and forestry processes
water is used and returned to the atmosphere by the growing plants (e.g. trees in
the case of wood) and surrounding soil during the process of evapotranspiration
(ET).2 Water could be directly accessed by the growing plants from rainfall,
condensation and/or shallow groundwater aquifers. These water supplies could be
supplemented by water from irrigation (from surface waters and /or shallow or deep
groundwater aquifers) and/or secondary water supplies such as sewerage and/or
industrial wastewater treatment facilities. It is important to note that of the
transpired water passing through a plant only 1% is used in the growth process.3 To
establish the rules for accounting for water consumption, we need to have a clear
understanding of the issues that we are trying to account for and ensure that the
measurement rules are appropriate.
The main concerns for water consumption include:
water scarcity and shortage to meet reticulated water demand for homes and
businesses
water scarcity for agriculture and forestry due to rainfall interception, aquifer
depletion, lowering water tables and reducing river flow volumes
changing rainfall patterns, and hence decreases and/or increases in water
availability across Australia due to climate change
ecological damage due to aquifer depletion, rising or lowering water tables,
reducing river flow volumes (rates and daily/seasonal/year-to-year variation),
water pollution (suspended solids, nutrients, chemical, as well as possibly
thermal).
There are many similarities between the accounting of renewable energy sources and
water as a renewable resource (provided our demands do not exceed rainfall supply
or cause the excessive extraction of groundwater from deep storage aquifers). The
basic premises should be that:
groundwater aquifers are not diminished over time because they are being
recharged by rainfall as quickly as they are depleted by run-off or extraction
rivers sustain a flow profile that can sustain the ecology and the requirements
of downstream users and downstream ecological systems.
Water use has different implications for different regions and many different
approaches are being explored from a theoretical and practical perspective in
Australia and overseas. LCI data collection needs to be compatible with emerging
water impact assessment methods. Accordingly, the following rules define how water
consumption will be accounted:
All water taken from the municipal reticulated water system should be
recorded.
2
Evapotranspiration is a collective term for the transfer of water, as water vapour, to the atmosphere from both
vegetated and unvegetated land surfaces. It is affected by climate, availability of water and vegetation.
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/averages/climatology/evapotrans/text/et-txt.shtml
3
http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/8i.html
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All water taken from groundwater aquifer sources and surface water sources
(which contribute to reduced aquifer volumes and reduced river flows) should
be recorded.
Where water is extracted and returned to the same body of water, then only
water lost to evaporation should be recorded (since this is the bit that no
longer contributes to that water body).
“Renewable water sources”, such as rainwater harvested from building roofs
or that which falls on and/or is used by renewable raw materials sourced from
plants from agricultural or forestry activities, should be recorded.
Water recycled for use on-site should be treated by system expansion, so that
only the net requirement for top-up water coming onto the site from outside
should be recorded. Where recycled water is provided to an off-site user, then
this water source should be treated as a co-product from the site operations
and allocated accordingly (see Section 14 Co-Product Allocation).
In the case of renewable raw materials sourced from plants from agricultural
or forestry activities the following should be recorded:
o
annual average rainfall across the relevant area (mm)
o
major catchment/region name(s) and areas (ha)
o
evapotranspiration rates from trees and soil during plant/forest growth
(mm)
o
original vegetation and soil types of the area
o
evapotranspiration rates from trees and soil of original (or
comparable) and previous vegetation of the area (mm)
o
annual agricultural or forest product production (e.g. m 3/ha).
11 Common Energy and Transportation
Modules
The AusLCI database will include separate data modules for common electricity
generation, energy combustion, energy pre-combustion and transportation processes
applicable to virtually all LCAs. It is therefore important that all other unit process
modules avoid double counting as follows:
1. Record delivered electricity use in kilowatt hours and voltage (if available) at
the point of use (e.g. with no adjustments for line losses).
2. Record delivered energy use by fuel and equipment type (e.g. natural gas
turbine), but not combustion emissions or pre-combustion effects unless
there is data available that is specific to that unit process. In this case, it
should be clearly described.
3. Record tonne.kilometres of transportation by mode at all process stages, and
identify the proportion of empty backhaul haulage capacity that is typical
(100% means all return journeys are empty and 0% that all return journeys
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are fully utilised) for specific transportation links (e.g. hauling of aggregates
from quarries), but not the actual energy use or effects of combustion.
Users of the LCI/LCA data may then account for transport to final use or for any
deliveries of materials, products and feedstocks on a consistent basis with the
transport data measured inside the system boundary for the compiled inventory
data.
The common energy and transportation modules will include the following:
process and transportation energy and process emissions for the
production and processing of fuels including coal, natural gas, fuel oil
(distillate and residual), gasoline, diesel, liquefied petroleum gas, fuel
grade uranium, and emerging energy sources
total pre-combustion fuel use and fuel-related emissions for the
production of the above fuels
pre-combustion and combustion energy factors for fuel
energy consumption for the generation and delivery of one composite
kilowatt-hour of electricity for Australian national and regional grids
(pre-combustion and combustion energy) –the National Greenhouse
and Energy Reporting System provides annually updated electricity
factors
transportation fuel requirements including pre-combustion and
combustion energy
environmental emissions (pre-combustion and combustion) per unit of
fuel for the combustion of fuels used in the following:
 industrial and utility boilers
 industrial equipment
 various modes of transportation, including:
articulated trucks
rigid trucks
rail freight
ocean freighters
air freight.
The LCA protocol will advise users of the database that the electricity grids used in
an LCI should:
Where unit process data are available on a regional basis, use regional grid
data.
Where unit process data cannot be related to specific regions, use the
national grid data.
Where electricity is an especially important issue and plant locations are
dictated by sources of electricity (e.g. electro-process industries), use specific
industry data.
Where self-generated electricity is used, this should be included in the
process energy reported for the unit process.
Where electricity cogeneration is used, the delivered energy arriving to the
site should be accounted for, including any shortfall in electricity requirement
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coming from the grid. Electricity generated on-site does not cross the system
boundary and need not be accounted, but surplus electricity leaving the site
back to the grid or to another user should be accounted as a co-product.
Both national and regional electricity grids will be included in the electricity, fuels and
energy database. Note that fuel use for self-generated electricity should be included
in the process energy reported for a unit process.
11.1 Sequestered Energy Sources
In common with the carbon cycle, solar energy is sequestered in the growing of
biomass materials and this manifests as a calorific value for the product. However,
since the objective of including energy in the inventory is as a measure of fossil fuel
depletion, recent biomass is considered as a renewable energy source, providing the
energy released from its calorific value with no depletion of fossil fuel reserves. As a
result, this energy is considered as coming free to a process. It should be noted that
fossil fuel derived energy that is used to grow, harvest and transport the biomass
does not come free and must still be accounted attributionally to the biomass.
Alternatively the energy could (as with carbon) be counted as sequestered energy
(negative energy consumption) and carried attributionally with the product. It would
then be considered as an energy resource consumption if it is burnt and the energy
put to good use or wasted.
12 Data Format and Communication
The central data access objective of the AusLCI database project is to make the data
available for a wide variety of intended users as cost-efficiently as possible.
However, many LCI/LCA documentation formats are extremely detailed and onerous
and expensive to compile. The BPIC/ICIP project will document a sub-set of key
practical data so as to encourage participation and engagement of industry. This
documentation will be coordinated with the more extensive data structures to ensure
compatibility with them. If additional documentation is found to be required, then
this can be added as the database evolves.
12.1 Transparency
Transparency requires open access to all pertinent “data about the data”, or metadata. Central transparency objectives of the BPIC/ICIP database project are to
develop and publish LCI data in a form that provides enough information about the
nature and sources of the data so that users and third parties can do the following
for each data item:
know the source(s) and age of the data
know how well the data represents an industry or process
understand how the underlying calculations were made
evaluate the appropriateness of the data for the user’s intended application
validate the results through testing and cross-checking of data and modelling,
and ultimately
make an informed determination concerning the extent to which they can rely
on the data and conclusions drawn from it.
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Transparency of the data and documentation will be facilitated by:
open publication of these guidelines governing how the databases are to be
developed
adherence to these guidelines as an interpretation and refinement of ISO
14044 for the goal and scope intended
encouragement of companies to seek third party verification of their data.
All aggregated data developed in the Australian National LCI database project will be
available to third parties (e.g. other than the commissioner of the study and the LCA
practitioner).
12.2 Data Quality and Uncertainty
The information about, and consequences of, uncertainty and data quality in LCI
analysis operate at three levels:
1. Process level: First, there is the quality of, and uncertainty in, the data at the
level of individual unit processes.
2. System level: Second, there are the total uncertainties in “rolled-up”, cradleto-gate aggregated LCI results for a product or material.
3. Application level: Third, in a given application, there is the additional layer of
uncertainties (and their net effects) arising through mismatches between the
subjects of the original LCI data and the actual unit processes or systems that
they are being used to model.
Considerable effort has gone into attempting to characterise and model uncertainty
in LCA datasets. The Australian LCI database project will attempt to capture the
information needed to support subsequent analysis of the aggregated uncertainty of
cradle-to-gate data sets. The basis upon which this is done is itself subject to very
large uncertainty. As a result, the BPIC/ICIP project will not endeavour to gather
uncertainty data but will gather the following data:
1. For primary and secondary data:
a. identification of age, source, method of collection (e.g. measured,
estimated from process engineering etc)
b. estimation of how representative the data are of an industry or
process group (e.g. the percentage of total production represented by
the sampled plants, rather than just “four plants out of 20”).
2. Documentation of the methods used to estimate missing data or to justify
excluding ancillary materials or missing data from the analysis. If sensitivity
analysis is used, its results should be summarised, but if surrogate data are
used from other processes, these processes and their data sources should be
clearly identified.
3. Description of the aggregation approach used to protect competition-sensitive
company-specific information (e.g. use of weighted averages, data for one
product rolled in with that of a similar product etc).
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4. Explanation of major assumptions and calculation methods in sufficient detail
that a reader or reviewer can assess the sensitivity of results to key
assumptions or methodological choices.
12.3 Sensitivity Analysis
Sensitivity analysis is used during database development, and it may also be
undertaken later by individual users of the data. For example, sensitivity analysis
may be used in the following instances:
during database development to determine whether results are sensitive to
missing data, based on tests with proxy data
during data use to analyse the effect of variations in different feedstocks and
operating conditions to inform process development and transport
considerations
when setting the input boundaries for a system and considering the exclusion
of materials that contribute small amounts to the total mass of the system, or
exclusion of missing data, sensitivity analysis shall be employed to evaluate
the environmental significance of the potentially excluded data.
For these cases, surrogate or estimated data can be used to represent these
materials in an initial analysis of the system, and the potential contributions to
system totals from these materials can be evaluated.
13 Critical Review
It is important that unit process data be evaluated by internal and external experts,
and compared with available published data, to:
1. ensure compliance with this methodology
2. identify any major errors in the data compiled.
The first of these tasks can be completed by reviewing the process diagrams, data,
scope and analysis documentation to ensure compliance with this methodology.
The second of these tasks is difficult to do without completely reproducing the entire
study from basic sources. A practicable compromise is to check the data for the
following:
Is there a mass and energy balance across the system boundary for all flows
into and out of the process?
Are any chemical processes stoichiometrically (calculation of the quantities of
reactants and products in a chemical reaction) valid and thermodynamically
feasible with realistic yields of product mixes?
Are the apparent efficiencies of equipment realistic?
Are the results comparable to those for similar analogous processes for which
data is available?
Are the data reasonable for the circumstances when benchmarked against
similar data from other sources/locations/organisations?
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Given a reasonable allowance for small errors and variations of method, any data
that appears inconsistent with published data should be referred back to the source
and rechecked for accuracy and relevance.
This review will be the responsibility of the AusLCI organisation prior to making the
data available. Separate review guidelines are being developed by AusLCI for this
process.
14 Co-Product Allocation
14.1 The Need for Allocation
In LCA, environmental impacts and benefits are calculated for different materials,
products, assemblies and services. These products are produced by a large diversity
of production systems that make up a modern industrial economy. Whenever a
single process produces more than one product or service, an approach is needed to
determine how the environmental impacts of the single process should be assigned
to each of the products or services. This is commonly referred to as the allocation
problem (even though some of the approaches to solving this are referred to as
avoiding allocation). Allocation is needed for example:
in oil refining where crude oil fractionation produces LPG, gasoline, diesel,
naptha, greases, wax and bitumen
in steel production where steel where slag is produced as a by-product
in electricity generation where fuel ash is produced as a by-product
for chlorine production from salt electrolysis where soda ash is produced as a
by-product
for log-sawing to produce dimensioned timber, but also wood chips, pulp or
particleboard.
14.2 Compliance With ISO 14044 for Allocation
The International LCA Standards (ISO 14040/14044) adopt a hierarchy for the
application of allocation approaches. ISO 14044 states (all direct quotations in
italics):
4.3.4.2 Allocation procedure
The study shall identify the processes shared with other product systems and deal
with them according to the stepwise procedure presented below:
a) Step 1: Wherever possible, allocation should be avoided by:
1) dividing the unit process to be allocated into two or more subprocesses and
collecting the input and output data related to these subprocesses;
2) expanding the product system to include the additional functions related to
the co-products, taking into account the requirements of 4.2.3.3.
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b) Step 2: Where allocation cannot be avoided, the inputs and outputs of the
system should be partitioned between its different products or functions in a
way that reflects the underlying physical relationships between them; i.e.
they should reflect the way in which the inputs and outputs are changed by
quantitative changes in the products or functions delivered by the system.
c) Step 3: Where physical relationship alone cannot be established or used as
the basis for allocation, the inputs should be allocated between the products
and functions in a way that reflects other relationships between them. For
example, input and output data might be allocated between co-products in
proportion to the economic value of the products.
Some outputs may be partly co-products and partly waste. In such cases, it is
necessary to identify the ratio between co-products and waste since the inputs and
outputs shall be allocated to the coproducts part only.
Allocation procedures shall be uniformly applied to similar inputs and outputs of the
system under consideration. For example, if allocation is made to usable products
(e.g. intermediate or discarded products) leaving the system, then the allocation
procedure shall be similar to the allocation procedure used for such products entering
the system.
The inventory is based on material balances between input and output. Allocation
procedures should therefore approximate as much as possible such fundamental
input-output relationships and characteristics.
14.3 Goal and Scope of AusLCI and Allocation
In order to meet these requirements for AusLCI stakeholders, the methodology and
allocation rules need to be for generic products, comprehensive, authoritative and
cover all sectors of industry with a consistent methodology. This needs to be ISO
14044 compliant, of national scope, consensus based, attributional (and specifically
non-consequential), and transparent with well-defined criteria.
It has subsequently been agreed that by providing unallocated base data, AusLCI can
simultaneously meet the aspirations and needs of those interested in consequential
LCA. However, the central theme of AusLCI has been agreed by majority to be
attributional LCA.
Reviewing ISO14044 in the light of these goal and scope statements:
a) Step 1: Wherever possible, allocation should be avoided by:
1) dividing the unit process to be allocated into two or more sub-processes
and collecting the input and output data related to these sub-processes;
2) expanding the product system to include the additional functions related to
the co-products, taking into account the requirements of 4.2.3.3.
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Step 1 is compatible and viable with the goals of AusLCI and is therefore a
requirement of these BPIC/ICIP/AusLCI Allocation Guidelines.
b) Step 2: Where allocation cannot be avoided, the inputs and outputs of the
system should be partitioned between its different products or functions in a
way that reflects the underlying physical relationships between them; i.e.
they should reflect the way in which the inputs and outputs are changed by
quantitative changes in the products or functions delivered by the system.
In order to comply with the requirements of Step 2 and the second paragraph
following it in ISO 14044 – namely:
Allocation procedures shall be uniformly applied to similar inputs and outputs of the
system under consideration. For example, if allocation is made to usable products
(e.g. intermediate or discarded products) leaving the system, then the allocation
procedure shall be similar to the allocation procedure used for such products entering
the system.
then the same allocation rule needs to be assigned to all materials and products up
and down the supply chain for any end use product or service.
Moreover, in order to comply with the goals of AusLCI for application to “all sectors
of industry with a consistent methodology” to deliver comparative data from different
sectors, the same allocation rule is also needed for all sectors.
There is no physical unit for which “the inputs and outputs of the system” could “be
partitioned between” all of “the different products or functions” that represents the
scope of AusLCI” in a way that reflects the underlying physical relationships between
them” for a project with a goal and scope as broad as AusLCI. It is not possible to
remain compliant with ISO14044 for AusLCI by using Step 2 of the ISO14044
hierarchy.
c) Step 3: Where physical relationship alone cannot be established or used as
the basis for allocation, the inputs should be allocated between the products
and functions in a way that reflects other relationships between them. For
example, input and output data might be allocated between co-products in
proportion to the economic value of the products.
The only common unit that could be consistently used up and down all supply chains
and across all products and services is economic value. This can be used for
products, co-products and wastes.
14.4 Case for Economic Allocation
The justification for economic allocation is that the process exists in the first place
because of capital investment and the investors anticipation of returns on that
investment from the sales of the products/services that arise from the process(es).
The operation of the process(es) is optimised to deliver economic return, and hence
there is a clear cause (investment) to effect (economic return) from the value of the
products that arise from the process(es). The extent to which each product or
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service contributes to the economic return from operation of the process(es) is
therefore the most appropriate unit that can be used for consistent allocation across
the scope of products/services to be represented by the BPIC/ICIP project.
Where:
v1 is value of Product 1, v2 is value of Product 2 …
t1 is the tonnage of Product 1, t2 is the tonnage of Product 2 …
v.t is the sum of the product of value and tonnage for all of the products –
the total value of the product stream from the process.
There can be short-term fluctuations in prices for which it would be impossible to
track the economic allocations of co-products. Also, these do not reflect the longerterm motivations of the investor in particular processes. To overcome this potential
limitation, it is important to use long-term price averages over at least three years.
14.5 End of Life Impacts for the Full Life Cycle
When undertaking LCA analysis for products or systems which have significant
impacts at the disposal stage – either through damage from disposal or potential
benefits from reuse and recycling, including any beneficial use of energy from waste
derived fuels – the LCA should include the disposal stage as well as production stage
in such assessments. This is not withstanding the fact that any stage of the LCA can
be omitted “… if it does not significantly change the overall conclusions of the study”
(International Organization for Standardization 2006b).
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
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14.6 Economic Allocation and Recovery (Recycling Reuse and
Waste Derived Fuels)
Allocation of recovery processes is only an issue when the recovery process crosses
system boundaries. Recovered materials used within production facilities need not be
allocated as they are inside the system boundary of the production system to which
they belong. System boundaries can therefore be expanded to ensure the recovery
process is inside the boundary.
System boundary expansion can also be used to eliminate fabrication wastes, where
off-cut or other scrap material is returned from a downstream fabrication stage,
provided the expanded system boundary is not breached by any open loop stage in
the recycling or reuse. An example of a closed loop system is: a steel manufacturer
produces rolled steel products which are fabricated into more complex products that
generate off-cuts and processing wastes but these are returned to the steel industry
for remelting, casting and rolling. A closed loop system which can be encompassed
within a single boundary will eliminate the recycled waste as a co-product of the
fabrication stage.
Primary materials/products that are recyclable/reusable provide two services to
humanity: first, as a material/product for immediate use; and, second, as a scrap
material that has remaining utility by virtue of its recyclable/reusable properties.
Primary materials from which fuels can be derived at the end of life also provide two
services: first, as a material; and, second, as a fuel source. In both cases the
impacts of the primary production should be shared between the initial use and the
subsequent use(s).
Essentially, recycled material may have a lower environmental impact than primary
material, but it can only have existed for recycling if (in the past) this material was
produced from primary sources. The recycled material should take a share of the
primary production burdens. Equally, the primary material deserves some
recognition for the fact that it has future potential to be recycled.
We can think of primary material coming from the mining of nature through to a
product/service to the end of its life, ending as waste with potential for recycling.
Similarly we may think of secondary material as coming from the mining of the
waste stream through to a product/service to the end of its life, ending as waste with
potential for still further recycling.
On this basis, primary production actually produces two products/services: first, the
primary product at a certain value; and, second, a smaller proportion of scrap arising
in future with a lower scrap value. Similarly, a primary material with a residual fuel
value should share its initial production burdens between the first use material and
the subsequent scrap’s economic value as a fuel.
We may now allocate the impacts of the primary process between:
the first primary product at its value; and
the proportion of the scrap that arises for recycling at its value.
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
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The effect of this allocation is to reduce the allocation of primary process impacts to
the primary product for its future recyclability/reusability/fuel value. This discount
from the primary production is then transferred to, and carried by, the scrap
material. But for some materials, the scrap material may then be recycled many
times, so this share of the primary production burdens must be shared between the
numbers of lives recycled. Where there is just one further use (as in the case of a
scrap going to fuel), then the number of future lives is just one.
Only scrap material that has fulfilled a service to society should be treated as
recycled/reused material. Post-industrial waste should certainly be recycled, but this
should not contribute to the estimation of recycled/reused yields. No allocation is
needed for post-industrial scrap because it can be readily eliminated by system
expansion. If post-industrial waste is counted as recycled/reused material, then this
produces a perverse incentive for inefficient fabrication – more wastage from
fabrication would distort upward the apparent proportions of material
recycled/reused when this material has never given service to society.
The proportion of scrap from first production is based on the proportion of total
annual production that comes from primary and end use recycled sources. The
number of recycled lives is based on the proportion of scrap recovered from that
available. The reason for using two different bases for the recycled proportions is
that exponential growth in consumption of many resources makes even very high
proportions of scrap recycled (from earlier primary production) only contribute a
small proportion of the current demand for a product by the time it comes back from
end use for recycling. This can be perhaps 100 years later from buildings for
example.
At low levels of recycling for low value scrap, this approach to allocation
differentiates the environmental performance close to the “primary only” and
“recycled only” impacts. As the proportions of scrap arising get higher and the value
of scrap increases, so more of the primary discount transfers to the secondary
product and the impact values for primary and secondary get closer to the same
value. Moreover, as the recycled proportions get closer to meeting demand for the
product, so the impact values gets closer to the recycled only values. The extent of
the transfer in allocation is completely described by the relative quantities of product
from each route and by the availability and demand for material determining market
prices.
15 Characterisation
Characterisation is the step in impact assessment where the relative potencies of
each consumption or emission are taken into account e.g. Global Warming Potentials
(GWPs) for GHGs and Ozone Depletion Potentials (ODPs) for ozone depletion
Section 8 above includes the recommended environmental impact categories for the
LCIA phase.
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
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The separate report A Life Cycle Impact Assessment Method for the BPIC/ICIP
Project – Part 1: Classification and Characterisation4 provides recommendations for
characterisation factors to quantify the environmental impact in each impact
category. The recommendations have been developed primarily based on
international best practice and the work by the AusLCI Impact Assessment
Committee. The figure below summarises the assessed readiness of characterisation
models and factors for use in Australia:
Figure 1: Schematic overview of Midpoint Impact Categories and Damage
Categories.
Figure 1 is a schematic overview of recommended LCIA midpoint environmental
impact categories and proposed connection to endpoint damage categories (for ISO
14044 compliance). Some impact categories aggregate several sub-categories e.g.
the abiotic resource depletion category includes mineral and fossil fuel depletion and
eco-toxicity includes freshwater, marine and terrestrial toxicity. Note that the impact
categories in red cannot yet be included in the LCIA phase.
4
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33
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
16 Normalisation
Normalisation is needed to bring all impact categories to a common dimensionless
basis. In order to do so, it is customary to use the per capita annual emissions and
consumptions (i.e. those of an average citizen) as the base. By dividing any impact
assessment parameter by the corresponding parameter for the average citizen, all
impact parameters are expressed as proportions (or multiples) of an average citizens
annual emissions or consumptions.
The separate report A Life Cycle Impact Assessment Method for the BPIC/ICIP
Project – Part 2: Normalisation 5 contains recommendations for normalisation factors.
These are calculated for the proposed environmental impact categories and
characterisation using data from:
o
o
o
o
o
National Pollutant Inventory (2007/08 data)
Australian Greenhouse Emissions Information System (2008 data)
ABARE’s Australian mineral statistics 2009
Pesticide Use in Australia (AACTE, 2002)
Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts report on
Ozone Depleting Substance (ODS) leakage (DEWHA, 2008)
It should be noted, however, that comparative assertions based on the direct LCI
data could be highly misleading for informing building design or construction
materials specification. This is because the inventory data would only rarely relate to
a legitimate functional unit for a building assembly.
17 Weighting
Weighting factors are needed to finally inform decisions made using LCA and these
factors reflect the relative significance of the different environmental impacts. This is
an inherently subjective assessment, and traditionally there has been some
reluctance to institutionalise the basis for weighting or establishing standardised
weighting factors. This has allowed users of LCA to bias the outcome of an LCA based
on their own personal priorities for weighting, and is the final cause of inconsistency
between LCA/LCI outcomes.
If LCA/LCI results are to be interpreted consistently in Australia, there is a need for a
consistent set of weighting factors reflecting the consensus view of stakeholders
rather than individuals personal priorities. Equally though, it is appropriate for
weighting factors to vary by location, climate and culture. For example, water
resources should not be considered of equal priority between wet temperate regions
of Australia and water-stressed areas in arid climates (or where aquifers are being
depleted). There is also a cultural dimension to weighting. In the northern states and
territories there is a tradition of more outdoor living, and this should be captured in
the weightings exercise in terms of the expressed weightings.
5
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
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For the BPIC/ICIP project, weighting factors will be established by conducting
stakeholder weighting panel meetings across Australia using an identical stakeholder
engagement weighting process. The selection of weighting parameters, and the
sampling frame of stakeholder groups and locations, will be decided by a working
group convened by BPIC representing the construction materials sectors in
collaboration with AusLCI and ALCAS and other invited stakeholders.
This methodology paper will be revised with details of this exercise and include the
weighting factors in the separate report Weighting of Environmental Impacts in
Australia6 for different locations around Australia when these weighting panel
exercises are completed.
It should again be noted that comparative assertions based on the direct LCI data
could be highly misleading for informing building design or construction materials
specification. This is because the inventory data would only rarely relate to a
legitimate functional unit for a building assembly. Weightings should only be applied
after all relevant data (including data for in-service consumption) have been
aggregated with the data from the LCI database (for embodied consumption).
18 Documentation of Life Cycle Inventories
A separate committee of AusLCI is developing the documentation requirements for
AusLCI to ensure that they are compatible with and outward and inwardly
translatable into and from other databases internationally. There is a proliferation of
these documentation standards used internationally and most are overwhelmingly
onerous in their detail and complexity. They are also very expensive to document
fully, both in terms of the data required and the meta-data (the description of the
data and assumptions used to compile each data item).
For this project, a streamlined data protocol has been devised to reduce the burden
and cost of data documentation, while retaining the key elements of essential
documentation that should permit appropriate use of the data and with sufficient
detail to enable critical reviewers to complete their assessments.
The streamlined data protocol is shown in Appendix D. This protocol remains
compatible as a sub-set of the AusLCI data protocol, and is hence still translatable as
a sub-set of the other international data protocols. This streamlined data protocol
might be described as the pareto documentation: “the minimum of essential
documentation to adequately describe and qualify each data item”.
It is expected that some modification to this data protocol will be needed once tested
by the rigours of real data collection and collation.
6
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
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19 References
Anderson, J. and Edwards, S., 2000, Addendum to BRE Methodology for
Environmental Profiles of Construction Materials, Components and Buildings, BRE,
Watford, UK.
Bare, J., 2002, Developing a Consistent Decision-Making Framework by Using the US
EPA’s TRACI, US EPA, Sustainable Technology Division Cincinnati, Ohio, USA.
Bare, J., Norris, G., Pennington, D. and McKone, T., 2003, TRACI – The Tool for the
Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and Other Environmental Impacts, Journal of
Industrial Ecology 6: 48–78.
Classen, M., Althaus, H.J., Blaser, S., Doka, G., Jungbluth, N. and Tuchschmid, M.,
2007, Life Cycle Inventories of Metals: Ecoinvent Report No. 10, v2.0, EMPA
Dübendorf, Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories, Dübendorf, CH.
Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts [DEWHA], 2008,
Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer,
http://www.environment.gov.au/atmosphere/ozone/legislation/montp.html,
accessed on 15/12/2009.
Doka, G., 2007, Life Cycle Inventories of Waste Treatment Services: Ecoinvent
Report No. 13, v2.0, EMPA St. Gallen, Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories,
Dübendorf, CH.
Dones, R., Bauer, C., Bolliger, R., Burger, B., Faist Emmenegger, M., Frischknecht,
R., Heck, T., Jungbluth, N. and Röder, A., 2004, Life Cycle Inventories of Energy
Systems: Results for Current Systems in Switzerland and other UCTE Countries:
Final Report Ecoinvent 2000 No. 5, Paul Scherrer Institut Villigen, Swiss Centre for
Life Cycle Inventories, Dübendorf, CH.
Finnveden, G., 1997, Valuation Methods Within LCA: Where are the Values?, Int J
Life Cycle Assess 2: 163–169.
Frischknecht., R, 2000, Allocation in Life Cycle Inventory Analysis for Joint Production
Int J Life Cycle Assess 5: 85–95.
Frischknecht, R., 2006, Notions on the Design and Use of an Ideal Regional or Global
LCA Database, Int J Life Cycle Assess 11: 40–48.
Frischknecht, R., Jungbluth, N., Althaus, H.J., Bauer, C., Doka, G., Dones, R.,
Hellweg, S., Hischier, R., Humbert, S., Margni, M. and Nemecek T., 2007,
Implementation of Life Cycle Impact Assessment Methods: Ecoinvent Report No. 3,
v2.0, Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories, Dübendorf, CH.
Frischknecht, R., Jungbluth, N., Althaus, H.J., Bauer, C., Doka, G., Dones, R., Heck,
S., Hellweg, S., Hischier, R., Nemecek, T., Rebitzer, G., Spielmann, M., and Wernet
36
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
G., 2007, Overview and MethodologyEcoinvent: Report No. 1, Swiss Centre for Life
Cycle Inventories, Dübendorf, CH.
Goedkoop, M. and Spriensma, R., 2000, The Eco-indicator 99: A Damage Oriented
Method for Life Cycle Impact Assessment – Methodology Report. PRé Consultants,
Amersfoort, The Netherlands.
Guinée, J., Gorrée, M., Heijungs, R., Huppes, G., Kleijn, R., de Koning, A., van Oers,
L., Sleejwik, A., Suh, S. and Udo de Haes, H., 2001, Life Cycle Assessment: An
Operational Guide to ISO Standards – Part 2a Guide, Center of Environmental
Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands.
Guinée, J., Gorrée, M., Heijungs, R., Huppes, G., Kleijn, R., de Koning, A., van Oers,
L., Sleejwik, A., Suh, S. and Udo de Haes, H., 2001, Life Cycle Assessment: An
Operational Guide to ISO Standards – Part 2b Operational Annex, Center of
Environmental Studies, Leiden University, The Netherlands.
Hischier, R., Baitz, M., Bretz, R., Frischknecht, R., Jungbluth, N., Marheineke, T.,
McKeown, P., Oele, M., Osset, P., Renner, I., Skone, T., Wessman, H. and de
Beaufort, A.S.H., 2001, Guidelines for Consistent Reporting of Exchanges from/to
Nature Within Life Cycle Inventories (LCI), Int J Life Cycle Assess 6: 192–198.
Howard, N., Edwards, S. and Anderson, J., 2000, BRE Methodology for
Environmental Profiles of Construction Materials, Components, and Buildings, BRE,
Watford, UK.
International Organization for Standardization (ISO), 2002, International
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Assessment – Data Documentation and Format, ISO 14048:2002; Second Edition
2002-02, Geneva, CH.
International Organization for Standardization (ISO), 2006, International
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Assessment – Principles and Framework, ISO 14040:2006; Second Edition 2006-06,
Geneva, CH.
International Organization for Standardization (ISO), 2006, International
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Assessment – Requirements and Guidelines, ISO 14044:2006; Second Edition 200606, Geneva, CH.
Jungbluth, N., Chudacoff, M., Dauriat, A., Dinkel, F., Doka, G., Faist Emmenegger,
M., Gnansounou, E., Kljun, N., Schleiss, K., Spielmann, M., Stettler, C. and Sutter J.,
2007, Life Cycle Inventories of Bioenergy: Ecoinvent Report No. 17, v2.0. ESUservices, Uster, CH.
Kellenberger, D., Althaus, H.J., Jungbluth, N., Kunniger, T., Lehmann, M. and
Thalmann, P., 2007, Life Cycle Inventories of Building Products: Ecoinvent Report
No. 7, v2.0, EMPA Dübendorf, Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories, Dübendorf,
CH.
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
Lindeijer, E., Muller-Wenk, R., Steen, B. with written contributions from Baitz, M.,
Broers, J., Finnveden, G., ten Houten, M., Köllner, T., May J., Milai Canals, L.,
Renner, I. and Weidema, B., 2001, Impact Assessment of Resources and Land Use,
SETAC WIA-2 Taskforce on Resources and Land.
Nemecek, T., Heil, A., Huguenin, O., Meier, S., Erzinger, S., Blaser, S., Dux, D. and
Zimmermann, A., 2007, Life Cycle Inventories of Agricultural Production Systems:
Ecoinvent Report No. 15, v2.0. Agroscope FAL Reckenholz and FAT Taenikon, Swiss
Centre for Life Cycle Inventories, Dübendorf, CH.
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Cycle Inventories – An Example of Using Data Quality Indicators, Journal of Cleaner
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Spielmann, M., Dones, R., Bauer, C. and Tuchschmid, M., 2007, Life Cycle
Inventories of Transport Services: Ecoinvent Report No. 14, v2.0, Swiss Centre for
Life Cycle Inventories, Dübendorf, CH.
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SETAC Europe, Brussels, Belgium.
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A Formalized Method of Prioritization by Expert Panels, Int J Life Cycle Assess 1:
182–192.
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of Industrial Ecology 4:11–33.
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Werner, F., Althaus, H.J., Kunniger ,T., Richter, K. and Jungbluth N, 2007, Life Cycle
Inventories of Wood as Fuel and Construction Material: Ecoinvent Report No. 9, v2.0.
EMPA Dübendorf, Swiss Centre for Life Cycle Inventories, Dübendorf, CH.
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Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
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Appendix A: BPIC Member Generic Process
Diagrams
ASI & SRIA
Integrated and EAF Steel-making and Steel Products
Limestone
Coals
Iron Ore
Scrap Steel
Blending
Plant
Sinter Plant
Coke Ovens
Peletiser
Electricity
Coke
Coke oven gas
Blastfurnace
Iron
Basic Oxygen
System
Oxygen
Electric Arc
Furnace
Slag
Reformer
gas
Continuous
Casting
Slab
Water
Industrial
Effluent
Rolling Mill
Slag
Iron
Slag
Structural
steel section
Steel rod
Steel bar
Steel Sheet
Steel Coil
Fabrication
Fabricated
Reinforcing mesh and bar
Sleepers
Rope and Wire
Pipe and
Tube
40
Profiled sheet products
Coated Coil
Pipe and Tube
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
AWA
Window Manufacturing
Aluminium
uPVC
Timber
Glass
Recyclable
Scrap
Receipt of Material
Extrude into Profiles
Mill into
Profiles
Process to
Sheet
Surface Finishing
Surface
Finishing
Cut to Size
Recyclable
Packaging
Packaging
Transport to Manufacturer
Packaging
Waste
Unpack and Store
Cut, Machine, Process
Fabrication
Waste
Assemble / Fabricate / Frame
Glaze, Seal, Fit Hardware
Packaging
Waste
Package / Wrap
Transport Window to Site
41
Unrecycled Wastes to
Landfill
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
Cement Concrete and Aggregates Australia
Aggregate Cement and Concrete Production
42
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
CMAA
Concrete Masonry Products
Sand
Recycled
Aggregate
Waste
Recycling
Value Add
Process
Fine Aggregate
Coarse
Aggregate
Weighing
Hoppers
Cement
Admixtures
Oxides
Water
Mixing
Industrial Effluent
Electricity
Shaping
Moulds (wet
cast)
Gas
Unrecycled waste
to Landfill
Curing
Packaging
Materials
Packaging
Pallet Repair
Transport
Pallets
Transport
Transport to
Storage
Transport to Site
Concrete
Masonry on-site
43
Pallet Repair
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
GBMA
Gypsum Board
Gypsum
Kettle
Electricity
Fine Mill
Heat Energy
Plant Waste
Reclaim
Paper
Additives
Water
Wallboard
Production
Waste
Wharehousing
industrial
Effluent
Transport
Wallboard at
Site
44
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
IMAA
Glasswool
Glass
Glasswool
Batch Mix
Cullet
Limestone
Ulexite
Granite
Dust
Melter
Forehearth
Gas
Binder
Materials
Water
Binder
Mix
Industrial
Effluent
Electricity
Forming
Fibering
SP
Curing
Cutting
Packing
LPG
Wharehouse
Transport
Diesel
Distribution
Center
Transport
Customer
45
Trimming
Waste
Trimming
Waste
Packaging
Waste
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
Rockwool
Basalt
Rockwool
Batch Mix
Slag
Cullet
Limestone
Coke
Cupola
Oxygen
Binder
Materials
Water
Binder
Mix
Industrial
Effluent
Electricity
Forming
Fibering
SP
Curing
Cutting
Packing
LPG
Wharehouse
Transport
Diesel
Distribution
Center
Transport
Customer
46
Trimming
Waste
Trimming
Waste
Packaging
Waste
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
Foil Insulation
Electricity
Gas
Foil
Aluminium
Foil
Primary Laminator
Plastic Foil
Secondary Laminator
Adhesive
Tertiary Laminator
Rewinder Perforator
Packing
Wharehouse
LPG
Transport
Distribution Center
Diesel
Transport
Customer
One-ply
Foil
47
Two-ply
Foil
Three-ply
Foil
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
RTAA
Concrete Tiles
Sand
Electricity
Gas
Conveying
Curing
Chambers
Cement
Mixer
Extrusion
Water
Mould
Preparation
Colour
Demoulder
Release
Agent
Tile Stock
LPG
Paletising
Palets
Diesel
Delivery
Concrete
Industrial
Effluent
Roof Tiles at
Site
48
Broken Tile
Waste to
Landfill
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
Terracotta Roof Tiles
Industrial
Effluent
Clay
Water
Terracotta
Clay
Preparation
Colour
Electricity
Extrusion
Conveying
Pressing
Clay Waste
Recycling
Kiln Drying
Colour
Surface
Treatment
Gas
Firing
Palets
Paletising
LPG
Tile Stock
Diesel
Delivery
Roof Tiles at
Site
49
Broken Tile
Waste to
Landfill
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
TBA
Clay Bricks and Pavers
Diesel
Extract Clay
Water
Crush, Grind, Screen
Industrial
Effluent
Dry
Electricity
Gas
Forming
Extrusion
Forming Dry
Press
Forming Stiff
Plastic Press
Firing Tunnel
Kiln
Firing Hoffman
Kiln
Firing
Downdraft Kiln
Broken
Brick
Waste to
Landfill
Packaging
Transport
Face Bricks at
Site
Common Bricks
at Site
50
Pavers at Site
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
TDA
Wood Products
Electricity
Water
Heat
Diesel
Hardwood
Sawmill
Hardwood
Native Forest
Logging
Hardwood
Residues
Diesel
Dimensioned Hardwood at
Merchant
Kiln drying
Hardwood
Veneer Cutting
Hardwood Veneer at
Merchant
LVL Laminate
Adhesive
LVL Production
Plywood Laminate
Adhesive
Plywood
Production
Hardwood LVL at
Merchant
Curing
Harwood Plywood at
Merchant
Softwood
Sawmill
Softwood
Plantation
Logging
Kiln drying
Softwood
Residues
Transport to
Merchants
Softwood
Veneer Cutting
LVL Laminate
Adhesive
LVL Production
Dimensioned Softwood at
Merchant
Softwood Veneer at
Merchant
Softwood LVL at Merchant
Curing
Plywood Laminate
Adhesive
Plywood
Production
Softwood Plywood at
Merchant
Chipper
Particleboard
Binder
Particleboard
Production
Particleboard at Merchant
Curing
MDF
Production
MDF Binder
51
MDF at Merchant
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
Appendix B: BPIC Member Products and
Functional Units
Association
Products
Variants
Functional Unit
CMAA
Dense standard bricks
Light weight double high bricks
Standard blocks
Coloured architectural split and polished blocks
Fire rated blocks
Standard core filled retaining wall blocks
Light segmental retaining wall block for walls lower than 1200
Heavy segmental retaining wall block, for walls higher than 1200
200*200*40 pavers made on end
400*400*50 pavers made in wet cast process
Interlocking pavers
kg
kg
kg
kg
kg
kg
kg
kg
kg
kg
kg
RTAA
Concrete Tiles
Terracotta Tiles
kg
kg
m2
m2
m2
m2
m2
m2
m2
m2
m2
m2
m2
ASI
Long
Angles
Flats (non-galvanised)
Rounds
Parrallel Flange Channels
Tapered Flange Beams
Universal Beams and Columns
Reinforcing Bar
Reinforcing Mesh
Stress Relieved Concrete Strand
TubelineÒ
GalTubeÒ
Welded Beams and Columns
Flat
Plate
Hot rolled strip
Galvanised strip
Zinc aluminium coated strip
Pre-painted strip
Hot rolled coil
Cold rolled coil
Flat Coated
Galvanised coil and sheet
Zinc Aluminium coated coil and sheet
Pre-painted galvanised coil and sheet
Pre-painted zinc aluminium coated coil and sheet
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
tonne
52
m2
m2
m2
m2
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
Association
Products
Variants
Functional Unit
GBMA
Plasterboard
kg
CCAA
Mortar - Typical Mix
Render - Typical Mix
Concrete - Residential Mix
Concrete - Commercial Mix
m3
IMAA
Glasswool
Rockwool
Polyester
Cellulose Fibre
Sheep wool
Foams (Polystyrene, Polyurethane etc)
Reflective Foil Laminate (RFL)
Acoustic Insulation
Fire rated Insulation
AWA
Combinations of:
Frame
Timber
Aluminium
UPVC
Composites:
Fibreglass/steel
m2
Frame Finishes
Stains
Powder Coating
Anodising
m2.R
m2.R
m2.R
m2.R
m2.R
m2.R
m2
TBD
TBD
Glazing
Monolithic
IGU's
Annealed
Toughened
Laminated
Coated
Hardware
Seals & Gaskets
Sealants
Fixings
Materials
Packaging
SRIA
Steel reinforcement defined as kg per cubic meter of concrete (concept design)
Steel reinforcement defined as reinforcing bar or reinforcing mesh
Reinforced concrete defined as concrete reinforced by rebar or reomesh (e.g. kg per m2)
Steel reinforcement defined as reinforcing bar or reinforcing mesh installed in concrete
Note that post tensioned or prestressed steel strand, steel decking and steel fibres are not included in
the definition of steel reinforcement or reinforcing steel
53
TBD
TBD
TBD
TBD
TBD
TBD
TBD
kg (/m3 of concrete)
kg (/m3 of concrete)
kg (/m2 of concrete)
TBD
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
Association
Products
Variants
Functional Unit
TBA
Solid brick
230Standard
x 110 x 76
Extruded Brick
230 x 110 x 50
230Standard
x 110 x 76
230 x 110 x 119
230 x 110 x 162
230 x 90 x 76
230 x 90 x 119
230 x 90 x 162
230 x 150 x 76
230 x 150 x 119
Paver
40 mm
50 mm
60 mm
65 mm
brick
brick
brick
brick
brick
brick
brick
brick
brick
brick
m2
m3
m4
m5
TDA
Logs
softwood:
large saw
medium saw
small saw
pulp
woodchips
hardwood:
veneer
high quality saw
low quality saw
pulp
poles
Sawn timber
green
dried
rough
planed
softwood chips
hardwood chips
Plywood
interior
exterior
formply
flooring
structural (3 thicknesses)
LVL (3 thicknesses)
Particleboard
raw (3 thicknesses)
decorated (3 thicknesses)
MDF
raw (3 thicknesses)
decorated (3 thicknesses)
Glulam
Engineered I-beams
Plywood/ OSB webs, softwood/ LVL flanges, each for 3 sizes
200 X 70mm OSB web & pine flanges
280 X 70mm OSB web & pine flanges
360 X 70mm OSB web & pine flanges
240 X 63mm plyweb & LVL flanges
300 X 63mm plyweb & LVL flanges
360 X 63mm plyweb & LVL flanges
54
m3
m3
m3
m3
m3
m3
m3
m3
m3
m3
m3
m3
m3
m3
m3
m3
m2
m2
m2
m2
m2
m2
m2
m2
m2
m2
m3
lineal m
lineal m
lineal m
lineal m
lineal m
lineal m
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
Appendix C: Conversion Factors
Volume and Mass
cubic
inch
ml
x
16.387
ml
0.0610
x
0.001
0.0338
1
liters
61.024
1000
x
1.805
29.573
231
VOLUME
Australi
an
barrels
cubic
feet
1.374x1
0-4
5.787x
10-4
2.642x1
0-4
8.387x1
0-6
3.532x
10-5
33.815
0.264
8.387x1
0-3
0.0353
0.0296
x
7.812x1
0-3
1.044x
10-3
3785
3.785
128
x
2.48x104
0.0317
7276.5
1.192x1
05
119.23
7
4032.0
31.5
x
4.21
1728
2.832x1
04
28.316
957.56
8
7.481
0.2374
x
cubic inch
Australian fl.
oz.
Australian
gallons*
Australian
barrels
cubic feet
MASS
grams
kilograms
grams kilogram
s
X
0.001
Austral Australi
ian fl.
an
oz.
gallons
*
0.0164
0.554
4.329x1
0-3
Liters
ounces
pounds
grains
tons
3.527x1
0-2
2.205x1
0-3
15.432
1.102x1
0-6
0.134
milligram
s
1000
1000
x
35.274
2.205
15432
1.102x1
0-3
1x106
ounces
28.350
0.28
X
0.0625
437.5
3.125x1
0-5
2.835x104
pounds
453.59
0.453
16.0
x
7000
grains
0.065
6.480x10
-5
2.286x1
0-3
1.429x1
0-4
x
5.0x10-4 4.536x105
7.142x1
64.799
0-8
9.072x
105
907.19
3.200x1
04
2000
1.4x10
7
x
9.072x108
0.001
1x10-4
3.527x1
0-5
2.205x1
0-6
0.0154
1.102x1
0-9
x
tons
milligram
s
*Note: Australian gallon = 0.80 Imperial gallons (Source: Australian National
Technical Information Services.)
55
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
To convert from
Grams / cu ft
to
Milligrams / cu m
multiply by
35.315x 103
Pounds / 1000 cu ft
Milligrams / cu m
Barrels Imp (petroleum)
Btu's
Cubic yards
Feet
Gallons (British)
Gallons (U. S.)
Inches (in)
Kilowatt - hours (kWh)
Miles (statute)
Ounces (avdp)
Pounds
Square feet
Tons (short)
Watts
Yards
Pounds
Acres
Square miles
Cubic feet (ft3)
liters
joules
liters
meters
liters
liters
meters
Mega joules
kilometers
kilograms
kilograms
square meters
kilograms
joules / sec
meters
metric ton
hectares
hectares
16.018 x 103
158.98
1054
764.534
0.305
4.546
3.785
0.025
3.6
1.609
0.028
0.454
0.093
907.185
1
0.914
0.0004
0.405
259
0.028
Cubic inches (in3)
cubic meters (m3)
cubic centimeters
(cm3)
Watt - sec
Calories (cal)
Gram - calorie
Watt - years
joule
joules
joules
joules
16.393
1
4.105
4.184
3.15 x 107
Sources: 1. Starr, C, 1971, Energy & Power, Scientific American; 2. Handbook of
Industrial Energy Analysis.
56
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
Appendix D: Streamlined Data Protocol
Example
AusLCI data documentation field
AusLCI data documentation field description
Data
AU
1 General dataset information
1.1 Key Data Set Information
1.1.1
Country
Country code
1.1.1.1
Region covered by data
Specific area/ state in country; e.g. eastern states of Data is representative of most major glualm production in Victoria and
Australia, Victoria (may be more relevant to
Queensland, Australia
agricultural products),
1.1.2
Data collection period
Period in years over which data was collected or the 2005- 2006
most representative period
1.1.3
Name of product/ service
Name of product or service represented by data set Glulam
AusLCI Functional unit (or reference unit if not
1.1.3.1a a final product)
Unit and flow property of product/ service referenced 1 m3 (volume)
by data (e.g. 1kg mass, 1m2 area, 1MJ energy).
1.1.4
Use advice for data set
General use advice of data. E.g. The LCI data set
can be used for all kinds of LCA study of products
where cement is used
- Dataset can provide data to make an LCA of building
- Dataset can be used to analyse and assess the environmental impact of
structural wooden and concrete frames in buildings during the whole life cycle,
by using the method of LCA.
1.1.5
Application of product/ service
Intended or possible application of the
product/ service. E.g. Green sawn timber used in
making pallets and craters.
Glulam used in structures, beams in roofing.
1.1.6
Category Information
System generated. Do not fill.
System/ Wood products
1.1.8
1.1.8.2
General comment on dataset
Owner of data set
General comment on dataset
Owner of data set
FWPA
1.3 Time representativity
1.3.2
Seasonal factors affecting data.
Seasonal factors affecting data. E.g. data set valid None
for winter.
1.5 Technological representativity
1.5.1
Description of technology
Technology description including background
system
Glulam is manufactured by gluing timber faces together to form larger
structural members for applications such as ridge beams, garage door
headers, floor beams, and arches. The glulam manufacturing process
consists of four phases: (1) preparing of sawn timber; (2) jointing the timber
into longer laminations; (3) face bonding by gluing the laminations; and (4)
finishing.
1.5.2
Flow diagram(s) of process
Process flow diagram showing the processes,
boundaries and major inputs and outputs into and
out of the boundary. Specify name of image file.
Name of file
Green timber
Boiler
Timber
Energy
• Electricity
• Natural gas
• LPG
• Diesel
• Gasoline
Dry timber
Kiln
Air drying
Timber dried
Trimming
Co-Products
End jointing
Waste
Planing
Adhesives
Steel strapping
Face bonding
Pressing & curing
Handling
Wrapping
57
Glulam
Emissions to
• Air
• Water and
• Land
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
AusLCI data documentation field
AusLCI data documentation field description
AusLCI data documentation field default
Description of boundary. E.g. Forest to log
production (cradle to gate), Entry of logs to sawn
timber production (gate to gate)
Gate to gate (manufacturing phase from sawn timber
supplied including transportation to final production of
glulam)
Description of any system expansion performed on
co- products or waste (sold)
Description of allocation method and data or
factors used including mass, volume, calorific
value, economic etc.
Description of any sensitivity analysis performed
and findings.
None
AusLCI Cut- off rules
2.2.1a
AusLCI2. Approximations made to fill data gaps
2.1b
No need to fill
No cut- off rules are used.
Describe gaps in and approximations used.
Assumptions: Wood density varies with dry condition.
Assumed air dried with 540kg/ m3. Average lubricant
assumed at 0.893kg/ litre. Average transport distance
from saw mill to Glulam manufacturing plant 70km. No
emissions in timber preparation.
2.2.3
Method of aggregation or averaging
used
Descriptive the method of aggregation or averaging Unit process data weighted according to proportion of
used including weighting factors.
production of the mills surveyed
2.2.7
Data source(s) used for this data set
1. Most data are collected from surveys and internal
Data source(s) usedfor this data set. E.g. Most
data are collected from survey of plants; Literature contacts (manufacturers)
2. Applied methodology in LCI are based on: ISO 14040:
reference to FWPA study (2008).
1997, Environmental management - Life cycle assessment Principles and framework; ISO 14041: 1998, E
2.2.8
Percentage supply or production
covered
Description of sampling
State percentage or supply or production covered
by this data set.
Describe how sampling for data collection was
performed. E.g. Sampled Veneer produced at 6
plywood and 2 LVL mills covering 95% of Australia's
plywood and 100% of Australia's LVL production.
Sample ranges from small old technology mill, to
large state of
More than 70% in Australia and more than 95% for VIC
and QLD, respectively.
Surveyed 4 mills. Mostly used annual consumption data at
plant level with appropriate allocation based to unit process,
site visits for verification.
Note the type of review as internal or external and
the name of the organisation.
Details of mass balance carried out and results,
e.g. difference of < 2%.
Details of energy balance carried out and results,
e.g difference of < 2%.
Details of analogous (similar) process with which
LCI was benchmarked and reference.
Reviewer name and
institution
Other review details
External
2 Modelling and validation
2. 1 LCI method and allocation
2.1.1
Type of data set
AusLCI Description of any system expansion
2.1.4.1a
AusLCI Description of allocation unit
2.1.4.1b
AusLCI Description of any sensitivity analysis
2.1.4.1c and findings
2. 2 Data sources, treatment, and
Shavings and saw-dust. Economic allocation on price for
both products (but both are negligible)
Sensitivity to source of electricty from Victoria and
Queensand were considered. More impact when former
was used was noted due to use of brown coal
generation.
representativeness
2.2.9
2. 4 Data validation
2.4.1
Type of review
AusLCI2.
4.1.1a
AusLCI2.
4.1.2a
AusLCI2.
4.1.3a
2.4.2
Mass balance
2.5.1
Conformity system name
Energy balance
Check with analogous process
Reviewer name and
institution
2.4.3
Other review details
2. 5 Consistency and conformity
Less than 1% discrepancy
None
CORRIM study of similar processes.
Puettmann, M.E., CORRIM
Conformity system name
AusLCI
AusLCI2. Conforms for goal and scope
5.1a
Yes or No
Yes
AusLCI2. Valid and compatible process diagram
5.2a
Yes or No
Yes
AusLCI2. Defined and complete system
5.3a
boundary
Yes or No
Yes
AusLCI2. Correct allocation method used
5.4a
Yes or No
Yes
AusLCI2. Appropriate data review
5.5a
Yes or No
Yes
AusLCI2. Correct use of sensitivity analysis
5.6a
Yes or No
Yes
AusLCI2. Correctly aggregated data
5.7a
Yes or No
Yes
AusLCI2. Correctly documentation
5.8a
Yes or No
Yes
2.5.2
Yes or No
Yes
Approval of overall conformity
58
Methodology Guidelines for the Materials and Building Products
Life Cycle Inventory Database
AusLCI data documentation field
AusLCI data documentation field description
AusLCI data documentation field default
3 Administraive information
3.1.1
Commissioner of dataset
Organisation commissioning the LCI study
FWPA
3.2.1
Data set generator / modeller
Seongwon Seo, CSIRO
3.3.1
Date and time completed
Name of person/ organisation generating the data
set
Date and time completed
3.3.5
3.4.3
Official approval of data set by
producer/ operator
Permanent dataset URL
3.4.4
Publication status
30- Jun- 08
Name of entity offcilaly approving the data set for
AusLCI
publication. E.g. AusLCI
If appropriate, note link or reference to the original NA
of this data set. Allows to review the original version
of a data set or to check for available updates.
Note whether data set finalised; entirely published
Finalised
4. LCI data
Inputs: These are the process inputs. One entry per input flow
AusLCI data
documentation
field
AusLCI data
documentation
field description
4.1.1
4.1.2
AusLCI4.1.2a
4.1.4
4.1.5
Type Of Flow
Name of input
Unit
Quantity
Data source type
Classify inputs as: Elementary Name of input
flow (from nature)/ Technical
flow (from Technosphere)
Name of unit of
measure
Quantity
Note if messured, from
literature, surveys, mixed or
other
Technosphere
Technosphere
Technosphere
Technosphere
Technosphere
Technosphere
Technosphere
Technosphere
Technosphere
Dried sawn timber
Electricity
LPG
Diesel
Natural gas
Rublicant
Glue (PR)
Water
Strapping (steel)
m3
Kwh
MJ
Litre
MJ
Litre
kg
Litre
kg
1.238
101.291
28.985
0.306
95.706
0.083
11.117
67.642
0.687
Estimated from surveys
Estimated from surveys
Estimated from surveys
Estimated from surveys
Estimated from surveys
Estimated from surveys
Estimated from surveys
Estimated from surveys
Estimated from surveys
Technosphere
Wrapping (plastic)
kg
0.780
Estimated from surveys
Outputs: These are the process outputs. One entry per output flow
AusLCI data
documentation
field
AusLCI data
documentation
field description
4.2.1
Type Of Flow
4.2.2
Name of output
AusLCI4.2.2a
Unit
4.2.4
Quantity
4.2.5
Data source type
Classify outputs as:
Elementary flow (to nature,
emissions)/ Waste flow/ Product
flow
Co-product
Co-product
Waste
Waste
Product
Name of output
Name of unit of
measure
Quantity
Note if messured, from
literature, surveys, mixed or
other
Shavings
saw dust
Solid waste
Wastewater
Glulam
m3
m3
tonne
Litre
m3
0.120
0.117
0.021
3.480
1.000
Estimated from surveys
Estimated from surveys
Estimated from surveys
Estimated from surveys
Estimated from surveys
59