Substitution

Miguel Brandão and Bo P. Weidema

Chapter 166 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment, 2026, pp 621-625 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: As by-products are often co-produced with the determining products, the resulting system will be a multi-product system. Because LCA studies are typically concerned with the impacts of one specific (determining) product, there is a need for a procedure to reduce multi-product systems to product systems with a single determining product as output. In the substitution approach, this is done by counterbalancing the supply of each by-product by a reduction in supply of the functionally equivalent amount of product from the marginal suppliers to the market on which the by-product is sold. The procedure depends on whether the modeled product is determining or a by-product. As opposed to allocation, substitution does not incur mass, energy, or economic imbalances.

Keywords: Substitution; Allocation; System expansion; By-product; Market balance; Constrained supply (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035309887
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781035309894.00171 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:22215_166

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jack Sweeney ().