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Mitigation Life Cycle Assessment: Best Practices from LCA of Energy and Water Infrastructure That Incurs Impacts to Mitigate Harm

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  • Emily Grubert

    (School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 790 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332, USA)

  • Jennifer Stokes-Draut

    (Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and ReNUWIt Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA)

Abstract

Climate change will require societal-scale infrastructural changes. Balancing priorities for water, energy, and climate will demand that approaches to water and energy management deviate from historical practice. Infrastructure designed to mitigate environmental harm, particularly related to climate change, is likely to become increasingly prevalent. Understanding the implications of such infrastructure for environmental quality is thus of interest. Environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) is a common sustainability assessment tool that aims to quantify the total, multicriteria environmental impact caused by a functional unit. Notably, however, LCA quantifies impacts in the form of environmental “costs” of delivering the functional unit. In the case of mitigation infrastructures, LCA results can be confusing because they are generally reported as the harmful impacts of performing mitigation rather than as net impacts that incorporate benefits of successful mitigation. This paper argues for defining mitigation LCA as a subtype of LCA to facilitate better understanding of results and consistency across studies. Our recommendations are informed by existing LCA literature on mitigation infrastructure, focused particularly on stormwater and carbon management. We specifically recommend that analysts: (1) use a performance-based functional unit; (2) be attentive to burden shifting; and (3) assess and define uncertainty, especially related to mitigation performance.

Suggested Citation

  • Emily Grubert & Jennifer Stokes-Draut, 2020. "Mitigation Life Cycle Assessment: Best Practices from LCA of Energy and Water Infrastructure That Incurs Impacts to Mitigate Harm," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(4), pages 1-17, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:gam:jeners:v:13:y:2020:i:4:p:992-:d:324063
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Singh, Udayan & Colosi, Lisa M., 2021. "The case for estimating carbon return on investment (CROI) for CCUS platforms," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 285(C).
    2. Grubert, E. & Zacarias, M., 2022. "Paradigm shifts for environmental assessment of decarbonizing energy systems: Emerging dominance of embodied impacts and design-oriented decision support needs," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    3. Wang, Xue-Chao & Klemeš, Jiří Jaromír & Ouyang, Xiao & Xu, Zihan & Fan, Weiguo & Wei, Hejie & Song, Weize, 2021. "Regional embodied Water-Energy-Carbon efficiency of China," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 224(C).
    4. Ahmad, Shakeel & Jia, Haifeng & Chen, Zhengxia & Li, Qian & Xu, Changqing, 2020. "Water-energy nexus and energy efficiency: A systematic analysis of urban water systems," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).

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