Organizational LCA Flashcards
Definition
Compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs and environmental impacts of the activities associated with the organization as a whole or portion thereof
adopting a life cycle perspective (OLCA, ISO/TS 14072; O LCA UNEP/SETAC
Guidance)
Main principles
- Environmental dimension
- Life cycle perspective
- Multi impact approach
- Focus on organizations (new!)
Organization goals of an O LCA
- Analytical goals
- Managerial goals
- Societal goals
Organization goals of an O LCA - Analytical goals
- Gain insight in internal operations and value chain
- Identify environmental hotspots
- Track environmental performance
Organization goals of an O LCA - Managerial goals
- Get support for strategic decisions
- Improve organizational procedures
- get the basis for environmental communication with stakeholders and reporting
- reduce operational costs
- show environmental awareness with marketing purposes
Organization goals of an O LCA - Societal goals
- reduce pressure on the environment
- enhance environmental tools within stakeholders
O-LCA
O LCA is not intended for comparison between organizations!
Societal needs
• 2002: World Summit for Sustainable Development
– Plan of implementation: “Develop production and consumption policies to improve
the products and services provided, while reducing environmental and health
impacts, using, where appropriate, science based approaches, such as life cycle
analysis”
• 2015: Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
– Goal 12: Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
– Target 12.6: Encourage companies, especially large and transnational companies, to
adopt sustainable practices and to integrate sustainability information into their
reporting cycle
Methodological approach
- between Life Cylce, Multi-impact and organizasion
- OLCA implementation can
benefit from previous experience
and existing practice with other
environmental assessment
approaches
Main application guidelines
– European Commission (EC) Organization Environmental Footprint (OEF) Guide (2012)
– ISO/TS 14072 Requirements and Guidelines for Organizational Life Cycle Assessment
(014)
– UNEP/SETAC Guidance on Organizational Life Cycle Assessment (2015)
European Commission (EC) Organization Environmental Footprint (OEF) Guide
• Aim
– Single market for green products
– Implementation of LCA in European environmental policy
• Document
– Technical guide for the calculation of the environmental footprint of organizations
– Focus on reproducibility, comparability and prescriptiveness
–Comparative assertions are supported
– Comparability based on sectors
– Sector rules have been developed for copper production and retail
ISO/TS 14072:2014 General
• Framework for conducting organizational life cycle assessment
– Setting system boundary
– Conducting LCI analysis and LCIA
• Extends the application of ISO 14040 and 14044 to all the activities of an organization
• Intended for any organization or segment of an organization that wishes to apply LCA
UNEP/SETAC Guidance on Organizational Life Cycle Assessment
• Focus on the application of organizational LCA (O LCA)
• Based on ISO/TS 14072, accompanying document
• Goal: demonstrate the potential and the benefits of applying Organizational LCA
• Provides detailed guidance on conducting an OLCA including
– Definition of scope and goal, inventory analysis, impact assessment, interpretation
– Recommendations also based on other documents for the environmental assessment of organization (GHG Protocol)
– Specific recommendations for application pathways based on the previous experience of the organization
– “First movers”
3.0 Method
general
like in LCA: 1. Goal and scope defiition 2. Inventory analysis 3. Impact assessment Interpretation
Goal
• Why is an organizational LCA being conducted? (motivation)
• What questions are we trying to answer? („research question“)
• Who will use the results?
- divided into analytical, managerial and societal goals
- The results are not intended to be used in
comparative assertions
Scope of an organizational LCA study
- define reporting organization and reporting flow -> show complexity of an organization
- No functional unit oder reference flow
- REPORTING UNIT:
quantified performance expression of the organization under study to be used as a reference
-Other common issues to be defined: allocation procedures, LCIA methods, data quality requirements, assumptions, etc.
Scope: Reporting organization
A. Subject of study
• specifies which (part of the) organization will be assessed
B. Consolidation method
• Big and complex organizations may include jointly owned operations
Who is responsible for environmental impacts and their mitigation?
–> Consolidation approaches:
– Control : the organization includes units over which it has control: • The organization has financial control over a unit if the former has the ability to direct the financial and operating policies of the latter with a view to gaining economic benefits from its activities.;
• The organization has operational control over a unit if the former or one of its subsidiaries has the full authority to introduce and implement its operating policies at the operation.
– Equity share : the organization includes units according to its share of equity
interest (i.e., according to the organization’s percentage ownership of each of the
units).
C. Reference period
• Specific time period for which the organization is being studied
• According to operation cycle of the organization
• In accordance to other reporting schemes
–> Relevant for performance tracking
System boundary
in product LCA: set of criteria specifying which unit processes are part of a product system and thus determine which processes shall be included within the LCA
• Whole organization
• 1 brand (B)
• 1 facility (II)
Cradle to grave or cradle to gate?
• Cradle to gate perspective allowed if:
– The organization has no influence on the use and end of life stage of its products
(e.g. via product desisgn)
– Case of raw materials and intermediate products
• ISO/TS 14072: Downstream activities (end of use phase/cradle-to-grave) should be included if:
– products directly consume energy or generate emissions during use phase (e.g.,
automobiles, aircraft, power plants and buildings) or
– indirectly consume energy or cause emissions during use (e.g., apparel that requires washing and drying, food that requires cooking and refrigeration or soaps and detergents that require heated water).
Life cycle inventory analysis
- Inventory expressed in elementary flows (see product LCA)
- First: identify activities involved
- Data collection requires resources –> Set priorities
- indirect upstream e.g. waste generated, business travel, employee commuting, assets leased
- indirect downstream e.g. assests, franchises,investments
Data collection approaches
- Bottom up approach: adding different LCAs of the products of the reporting organization, weighted by the amount of products that are produced during the reference period. Supporting activities need to be considered separately. Product–> organization
- Top down approach: considers the reporting organization as a whole and adds upstream (cradle to gate) models for all inputs of the organization and downstream (gate to grave) models for all outputs. Organization –> Product
Dis-/advantages Bottom-up approach
+ Product LCAs might be more precise compared to the data collected on the organizational level
+ Working effort might be reduced through establishing generic or representative products
- Product LCAs usually do not include supporting activities (e.g. R&D, capital equipment), business travel, employee commuting etc. These activities need to be calculated separately
Dis-/advantages Top-down approach
+ Data collection might be easier compared to product LCAs (e.g. data from the procurement department)
+ The data covers all activities including supporting activities
- Datasets might be less precise (e.g. purchase of 1 ton of plastics which kind of plastic?)
Specific data sources (primary data)
- Process or plant level consumption data
- Bills and stock/inventory of consumables
- Emissions declared/reported to authorities for legal purposes such as permits or fulfilling reporting requirements
- Emission measurements
- Mass balance
- Composition of waste and products
- Procurement and sale department(s)
Generic data sources (secondary
data)
• Industry average data:
– data from literature or scientific papers
– life cycle inventory databases
– other databases from governments, international governmental organizations, associations, etc.
– industry association reports
– government statistics
• Average financial data
Impact assessment
• See impact assessment methods in product LCA
- e.g. divided in three activities: (1) Distribution and final disposal activities (2) Production and transportation of raw materials (3) Organization activities
Interpretation
• The environmental hotspots are identified in relation to the activity/stage of the value chain
• Methodology and results are evaluated for completeness, sensitivity and consistency
– Were all relevant activities and impacts considered?
– Which influence did assumptions/data choices have on results?
– Same assumptions/allocation methods used throughout the whole study?
• Influence of data sources, e.g. for suppliers, is discussed
Decision making
• Enhancing insights
–„if you can measure it you can manage it“
• Forecasting scenarios for internal use
–„what if“ for measures and trade offs
• Stimulating data collection efforts
– More disaggregated data may be needed
– Specific suppliers‘ data instead of generic sectoral figures
– Initiate LCA studies for certain products
Organization LCA in management -
Setting targets and track performance
• Environmental target – Quantified reduction – Reference time – For all impact categories – At a global level – For the whole value chain --> Avoid burden shifting
• Performance tracking
– Maintaining consistency over time
– Managing organizational and data changes
– Accounting for changes in the reporting flow
Summary
• Life cycle approach for multi impact assessment of organizations
• Avoid burden shifting to other environmental aspects, sites, parts of the value chain
• Method standardized by (ISO/TS 14072) and application explained in the UNEP/SETAC guidance
•Method for product LCA (ISO 14040 and 14044) adapted for organizations:
– Complexity (reporting unit) instead of comparability (functional unit)
– Define consistent system boundaries
– Activities: direct, indirect, upstream and downstream, supporting
– Data collection approach (bottom up, top down)
Life cycle inventory analysis - steps
- Identify involved activities/processes
- Prioritize data collection efforts
- Select data collection approach
- Data collection
- Validation of data
- Rating data to reporting flow
- Data aggregation
Life cycle inventory analysis - indirect upstream
- Supporting activities (e.g. Buildings, machinery, canteen, etc.) (new)
- Purchased energy (also in Product LCA)
- Procurement (also in Product LCA)
- Waste generated (e.g. Production, Packaging, Canteen, etc.) (new)
- Business travel ( e.g.differentiatedby mode of transport) (new)
- Employee commuting (new)
- Transportation (also in Product LCA)
Life cycle inventory analysis - direct
Manufacturing (also in Product LCA)
Life cycle inventory analysis - indirect downstream
- Transportation (also in Product LCA)
- Processing (also in Product LCA)
- Use phase (also in Product LCA)
- EoL (also in Product LCA)
- Assets, franchies, investments (new)
Data collection
• Data collection requires resources –> Set priorities
Quantitative aspects:
- Environmental impacts
- Mass or energy
- spending or revenue
Organizational aspects:
- Suppliers closeness
- Influence
- Risk
- Stakeholders
- Qutsourcing
Data quality
- Temporal representativeness
- Geographical representativeness
- Technological representativeness
- Precision
- Completeness
- Reproducibility
- Reliability
What is O-LCA?
Compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs and environmental impacts of the activities associated with the organization as a whole or portion thereof
adopting a life cycle perspective (OLCA, ISO/TS 14072; O LCA UNEP/SETAC
Guidance)
What are the goals?
- Analytical goals
- Managerial goals
- Societal goals
+ explaining the goals
Which methods for data collection are out there?
- Bottom up approach: adding different LCAs of the products of the reporting organization, weighted by the amount of products that are produced during the reference period. Supporting activities need to be considered separately. Product–> organization
- Top down approach: considers the reporting organization as a whole and adds upstream (cradle to gate) models for all inputs of the organization and downstream (gate to grave) models for all outputs. Organization –> Product
