
Life Cycle Assessment and Beyond
Release Date: June 2021
Professional Accreditation: IEMA (as part of MSc)
Lead Organisation: IBERS, Aberystwyth University
Evaluating environmental impacts: do your assessments measure up?
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is widely used to measure and verify the environmental impacts associated with food and biobased products. Limitations relating to approach, scope and data mean that LCAs may not always fully reflect impacts across the whole life-cycle of a product. Regulations and evaluation of findings are therefore important aspects in the application of LCAs, while new methodologies such as Complex Value Optimisation for Resource Recovery (CVORR) are being developed with a wider scope than traditional LCAs. This module is designed to provide a detailed knowledge and understanding of LCA and an insight into CVORR and Environmental Product Declarations (EPD) for professionals concerned with assessing the sustainability credentials of a food, biobased product, or waste material.
Content
The course will consist of a series of lectures and guided learning focused on:
List of Units
Introduction | to the breadth and scope of LCA |
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Components of LCA | The importance of feedstock choice, conversion process, transport and energy consumption, and end of life disposal options, with a focus on fluxes of CH4 and N2O as well as CO2 along with economic, social and technical metrics. |
LCA Protocols | The range of international protocols for performing LCA and the challenge of determining appropriate emissions factors will also be reviewed. |
Driving Policy | How LCA can steer policy |
The Global Carbon Cycle Farming and GHGs | Modelling the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of food production |
Other Key Ecosystem Services | The assessment of other eco-service impacts e.g. regulation of water and air pollutants; impacts of land use change |
Environmental Product Declarations | A look at the use and development of EPDs |
Complex Value Optimisation for Resource Recovery | CVORR theory and framework |
Case Studies | A range of product case studies including biofuels and bioplastics. |
Tutors
Tutors Name |
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Dr Stephen Chapman |
Dr Richard Kipling |