Can we improve the environmental benefits of biobased PET production through local 1 biomass value chains? A life cycle assessment perspective

Carlos Garcia-Velasquez and Yvonne van der Meer

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: The transition to a low-carbon economy is one of the ambitions of the European Union for 2030. Biobased industries play an essential role in this transition. However, there has been an on-going discussion about the actual benefit of using biomass to produce biobased products, specifically the use of agricultural materials (e.g., corn and sugarcane). This paper presents the environmental impact assessment of 30% and 100% biobased PET (polyethylene terephthalate) production using EU biomass supply chains (e.g., sugar beet, wheat, and Miscanthus). An integral assessment between the life cycle assessment methodology and the global sensitivity assessment is presented as an early-stage support tool to propose and select supply chains that improve the environmental performance of biobased PET production. From the results, Miscanthus is the best option for the production of biobased PET: promoting EU local supply chains, reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (process and land-use change), and generating lower impacts in midpoint categories related to resource depletion, ecosystem quality, and human health. This tool can help improving the environmental performance of processes that could boost the shift to a low-carbon economy.

Date: 2021-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr and nep-env
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2107.05251 Latest version (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:arx:papers:2107.05251

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators (help@arxiv.org).