Transcript Producer / Purchaser Price Issues EIO-LCA Data Issues

Advanced LCA – 12-716
Lecture 2
Today’s lecture
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Data sources and issues for
EIOLCA
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Data consistency checks
Common research “problems”
Studying impact where the product/service has
little influence:
1.
–
Energy use of digital distribution of company
environmental reports
Alternatives to lead-tin solder (small portion of landfill
lead but… relevant for informal recycling, but not LCA
problem yet)
2. The “method trap”: studying what has already
been understood with more complicated method
to improve accuracy
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Is there an important qualitative question which the
added accuracy will answer?
3. The “nobody’s done it” trap: maybe there’s a
reason why.
Selecting research topics
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Tendency to be driven by
methodological/community level questions
Certainly no harm in doing more studies
but:
There are many “double dividend”
LCA problems: methodological and
significant societal relevance.
(Isaac Newton didn’t do any LCAs!)
Materials flows and lifestyles
Source: J. Ausubel, “The environment for future business” (1998)
Energy use in US and Japanese
economies (1999)
Total energy demand (10^10 MJ)
industrial
commercial
residential
transport
Energy per capita (GJ/ person)
Per GDP (MJ/PPP $)
US
Japan
10,214
1,526
36%
48%
17%
13%
20%
14%
27%
25%
366
121
13
6
Sources: US Annual Energy Outlook, Integrated Energy Statistics, Maddison (for PPP)
US industrial energy use
1.
Boyd
Source: ORNL, “Scenarios for a Clean Energy Future” (2000)
Japan industrial energy use
Breakdown of industry energy use agriculture,
in Japan6%
mining, 0.4%
construction,
2%
other, 13%
foods, 3%
fabrics, 2%
metal
machinery, 6%
paper/pulp, 6%
non-ferrous, 2%
iron/steel, 24%
chemicals,
29%
ceramics, 7%
Source: Integrated Energy Statistics (2000)
Data types
What kind of data are relevant? Depends
on LCA question, but in general:
• Technologies in the industry
• Material input-output
• Technological progress
• Geographical distribution of production
Geographical variation
Differences in:
1. Technology
2. Producer prices
3. Energy sectors
International variations in carbon
intensity of electricity
•
•
Electricity is a major player in a number of
environmental impacts (e.g. CO2, SOx, NOx
emissions)
Different mixes (and to lesser extent
efficiencies) of coal, gas, hydro, nuclear and
other generation induce huge international
variations in emissions:
CO2 (g per kWh)
US
Japan
France
593
355
70
Data sources for Process LCA
LCA databases
• Engineering literature
• Industry associations
• Government agencies
• Company reports
(see review paper for more on some of these)
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The Net as search/organizing
mechanism
1.
2.
3.
4.
google and scholar.google.com
Sciencedirect.com
Web of Science
Proquest (esp. professional literature)
Keywords: remember to try units
(e.g. MJ, $) and names of inputs and outputs
Also: getting better daily, but bear in mind that
many resources are still only in print.
Some LCI/LCA process databases
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IDEMAT – developed at U. Delft. Includes
impact assessment.
BUWAL 250 – Swiss, mainly packaging
GaBi – collected by LCA consulting firm
Ecoinvent – Swiss based, supposedly best
documented.
JEMAI (Japanese industry data, only in
Japanese)
Government agencies
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US Economic Census – many sectors
(http://www.census.gov/econ/census02/guide/INDS
UMM.HTM )
United States Geological Service – mineral
commodities (http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/)
US Residential Energy Consumption Survey
(http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/recs/)
Europe Integrated Pollution Prevention Bureau
(http://www.epa.ie/Licensing/IPPCLicensing/BREF
Documents/)
Plus various, but many around the world do not put
information on the web yet
Engineering literature
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Encylopedias – e.g. Kirk Othmer,
Ullman’s
Professional magazines – e.g.
Semiconductor International
Topical technology books – e.g. VSLI
Manufacturing)
Company environmental reports
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WMC – energy, SO2 emissions, water use data from
Australia’s Olympic Dam, copper, uranium, gold, silver coproduct mining
http://hsecreport.bhpbilliton.com/wmc/2004/performance/odo/data/index.ht
m
• HP - Social and Environmental Responsibility Report.
(http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/globalcitizenship/csr/csrreport02/hp_csr_full_
lo.pdf)
Only firm level data, but consulting firm data on economic
value of different products.
In general very hard to find product normalized data.
Industry associations
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International Iron and Steel Institute
(www.worldsteel.org)
Semiconductor Industry Association
(www.sia.org)
Japan Building Association (only in
Japanese)
Sectoral Classification
Schemes
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ISIC – International Standard Industrial
Classification
NAICS – North Amer. Classification
System
NACE – Statistical Classification of
Economic Activities in the EC
Point: There’s a lot. For bridges
between systems and comparisons, see
Eurostat’s RAMON system (Google it)
Input-Output Tables
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Best to use a common set with standard
Classification (if >1)  OECD has one
– Uses 41 sector ISIC classification
– Available for 20 countries
» W Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, China, Japan, Korea,
Brazil
– Notice many countries don’t produce one!
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[email protected] , mention Input-Output
in title and provide:
– Name, Email, Institution, Country of Residence
Environmental Data
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Lots of other groups doing EIO-type work
– Academic
– Country-wide
•
Some we know of:
– Japan (Nansai and Moriguchi): details of 400
sector model (1990, 1995, 2000, CO2 plus SOx
and NOx
(http://www-cger.nies.go.jp/publication/D031/CGER/Web/eng/index-e.htm )
– UK – Detailed Country-wide effort
» http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nscl.asp?ID=6805
– Europe-wide GHG accounting
» Available on EuroStat: Europa (Google it)
EIO-LCA Data Example
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Hopefully read documentation excerpt
Where does EIO-LCA data come from?
What all needs to be done to make it
useable on the web?
Data Availability—4 Scenarios
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Have IO and Enviro data
– Best case scenario
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Don’t have IO or Enviro data
– Generally assume = another country (US
for developed world, China for developing)
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Have 1 but not the other
– Harder to say what to do
– Either way you’re assuming!
Data consistency checks
Meta-question: how do we know if the
numbers we base our results on are
reasonable?
Almost always secondary sources, so
never know for sure, but … different
consistency checks are available.
Data consistency checks
1.
2.
3.
Multiple sources
Mass balance
Micro to macro scaling
Multiple sources
Principle: where possible, collect several sources
describing same “thing”:
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Process input/output – find from different
facility or aggregation
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Economic input output – can try different
country (rough check)
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Prices/product bill of materials
Recurring issues
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Often need to try to use different
types or year of data for
comparison.
Often difficult to separate variation
in data quality with type, year,
aggregation, etc.
Materials balance
Principle:
• Mass is conserved (near enough) or
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What comes in must come out
(and vice versa) or
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Sum of masses of inputs = sum of
masses of outputs
Micro to Macro scaling
Principle: any micro-result (e.g. energy
needed to make one widget) must
make sense of at the macro-level
Scale up micro-result and check with
known macro-data
Recall examples from last class (water,
gold in computers)
Conclusions
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Data collection skills not only useful in getting
initial results, but in checking the work of
yourself and others.
Many of these checks are labor intensive,
often will not have time to do for all data,
but….
At least try to do for key data points.
Producer and Purchaser
Prices
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Recall EIO-LCA (currently) uses just
producer costs
– i.e., only reflective of how much it costs to
make, not how much to buy
– Buy = purchaser price
– What is the difference?
– What makes up the difference?
– How can we convert between them?
Producer / Purchaser Prices
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See spreadsheet linked for today
How would we use it?
So instead of “$20,000 car”…?
Exta Credit Question
Show effects for each of 500
sectors?