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The 54th LCA forum was held on December 5, 2013 to launch the fourth generation ecological scarcity method, applied to Switzerland. This conference report presents the highlights of the LCA forum. The ecological scarcity method belongs to the family of distance-to-target methods and is based on politically and legally defined environmental goals. The application of the method in industry and politics as well as its benefits, the main elements of the method and new elements such as the assessment of abiotic resources, global land use, noise and nuclear waste are presented. The losses (and not the extraction) of abiotic resources are characterised with the abiotic depletion potential. Land use impacts on flora and fauna biodiversity are quantified per land use type and for 14 different biomes. Transport noise is assessed based on the number of highly annoyed persons. Finally, nuclear waste is characterised using the radio toxicity index, a parameter commonly used in the nuclear industry. In three policy-making areas, LCA in general and the ecological scarcity method in particular are being applied: waste policy, biofuels tax exemption and Green Economy. Practical applications in administration and industry show that the eco-factors are considered useful in decision making because they cover a broad range of environmental impacts aggregated to a single score. The results of first applications and comparisons showed that the switch from third to fourth generation eco-factors hardly affects the results and conclusions although there are some significant changes in the eco-factor of individual pollutants. It was concluded that the fourth generation is a moderate evolution from the third generation published in 2008. It is considered crucial to allow for single-score methods as they allow to assess environmental impacts comprehensively and to identify environmental hot spots. The method presented thus is suited for a “true and fair” reporting on environmental information.

PURPOSE: Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) is today an important methodology to quantify the life cycle based environmental impacts of products, services or organisations. Since the very first LCA studies, the cumulative energy demand CED (also called ‘primary energy consumption’) has been one of the key indicators being addressed. Despite its popularity, there is no harmonised approach yet and the standards and guidelines define the cumulative energy demand differently. In this paper, an overview of existing and applied life cycle based energy indicators and a unifying approach to establish characterisation factors for the cumulative energy demand indicator are provided. The CED approaches are illustrated in a building’s LCA case study. METHODS: The five approaches are classified into two main concepts, namely the energy harvested and the energy harvestable concepts. The two concepts differ by the conversion efficiency of the energy collecting facility. A unifying ‘energy harvested’ approach is proposed based on four theses, which ensure consistent accounting among renewable and non renewable energy resources. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: The indicator proposed is compared to four other CED indicators, differing in the characterisation factors of fossil and biomass resources (upper or lower heating value), the characterisation factor of uranium and the characterisation factors of renewable energy resources (amount harvested or amount harvestable). The comparison of the five approaches is based on the cumulative energy demand of a newly constructed building of the city of Zürich covering the whole life cycle, including manufacturing and construction, replacement and use phase, and end of life. The cumulative energy demand of the life cycle of the building differs between 336 MJ oil-eq/m²a (‘CED uranium low’) and 836 MJ oil-eq/m²a (‘CED energy statistics’). The main differences occur in the use phase. The main reason for the large differences in the results are the different concepts to determine the characterisation factors for renewable and nuclear energy resources. CONCLUSIONS: The energy harvested approach ‘CED standard’ is a consistent approach, which quantifies the energy content of all different (renewable and non-renewable) energy resources. The ‘CED standard’ approach and the impact category indicator results computed with this approach reflect the safeguard subject ‘energy resources’ but not (no other) environmental impacts. The energy harvested approach proposed in this paper can readily be implemented in different contexts and applied to various data sets.

The 57th life cycle assessment (LCA) forum was held on December 2, 2014 to discuss the European and Swiss situation with regard to the environmental assessment of buildings. This conference report presents the highlights of the LCA forum. Several methodological approaches exist to assess the environmental assessment of buildings. In Switzerland, all technical bulletins of the Swiss Society of Architects and Engineers (SIA) related to this topic and most labels and certification schemes rely on the KBOB recommendation 2009/1:2014, which in turn is based on the ecoinvent database. In Europe, the standards on environmental product declarations (EPD) of construction products and buildings and the guide on product environmental footprints published by the European Commission are applied. In Austria, France and Germany, environmental product declarations form an important part of certification schemes of buildings. The European construction product directive names the quantification of the environmental performance as one of the seven basic requirements on construction works. This basic requirement needs now to be embedded into the harmonised technical specifications (such as harmonised European Standards, hEN or European Technical Assessments (ETA)). The situation in Austria, France and Germany illustrates the diversity of European labels, certifications and information schemes even though they all refer to the European EPD standards. France for instance asks for requirements additional to the European Standards, and several labels using different life cycle assessment databases are in operation in Austria. On the other hand, the two main certification schemes in Germany use the same approach, indicators and database. Several initiatives are ongoing or being launched in Europe which try to further harmonise the environmental assessment of buildings and construction materials. The different presentations showed the variety of applications of life cycle-based environmental information in the planning process of buildings, ranging from conceptual decisions to suppliers’ choices, decisions on materialisation up to labelling and certification of built properties. It was concluded that unifying life cycle inventory methodology, environmental indicators and life cycle inventory background databases is most important in view of further harmonisation. At the same time, it was admitted that harmonisation in these areas is difficult if not out of reach.