Modelling approaches for consequential life-cycle assessment (C-LCA) of bioenergy: Critical review and proposed framework for biogas production

Antonino Marvuglia, Enrico Benetto, Sameer Rege and Colin Jury

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2013, vol. 25, issue C, 768-781

Abstract: Conventional life-cycle inventories (LCIs) are static models not considering any mechanism of revenue maximisation and price equilibrium under external constraints. An additional demand of a given commodity, irrespective of the amount, can always be supplied by the average supplier under fully elastic market assumption. This constitutes a recognised limitation for the application of LCA to the assessment of the environmental consequences of changes applied to complex systems, like agro-systems. In the so-called consequential LCI (C-LCI), the relationships between the activities and processes of a life-cycle are no longer seen as essentially technical connections, based on average data; instead the determining socio-economic mechanisms are considered via market information and eventually economic models (partial or computable general equilibrium). The practical implementation of C-LCI is however still obscure to many practitioners and the complementarities and overlaps between the different C-LCI modelling approaches have not been completely clarified so far.

Keywords: Consequential LCA; Partial equilibrium model; General equilibrium model; Biofuels; Land use change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

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DOI: 10.1016/j.rser.2013.04.031

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