scholarly journals Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA): principles and practical implications for industrial projects

Management ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 138-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Rybaczewska-Blażejowska ◽  
Dmitry Palekhov

Summary Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA): principles and practical implications for industrial projects This article discusses the theoretical and practical aspects of the application of the life cycle assessment (LCA) technique in the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process. LCA enables to consider the environmental impacts of the whole production system, including upstream and downstream processes and to estimate their consequences already at the project planning stage. It was illustrated using the case study of the planned furniture production plant representing the industrial sector. The conventional simplified cradle-to-gate LCA analysis, using SimaPro software and the ReCiPe Endpoint method, was performed. It revealed that unlike the findings of EIA made with the support of traditional methods, not waste, airborne emissions and noise, but the particleboard and the fibreboard used by the planned furniture production plant have the most detrimental impact on the environment in all impact categories. The greatest damage it causes in the areas of protection of resources followed by ecosystems. The research proved high applicability of EIALCA approach for the evaluation of the environmental impacts of planned industrial projects.

Environments ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (9) ◽  
pp. 105
Author(s):  
Kavya Madhu ◽  
Stefan Pauliuk

Planning urban expansion under the interconnected Sustainable Development Goals requires a systemic analysis of its environmental impacts. The benefits of integrating the widely used system analysis tool life cycle assessment (LCA) into the planning process tool environmental impact assessment (EIA) are described in the literature. However, not many applications of such an integration have been conducted. The aim of this study is to refine the framework for integrating LCA into the process of EIA and to apply this framework to an example of urban expansion: Masdar City in Abu Dhabi. The integrated framework builds on the complementarity between the scope and assessment steps of the tools and assesses the impacts for the areas of protection: human health, ecosystem, and resources. The framework is then applied to the vehicles, buildings, and infrastructure in the city’s first development phase (DP1). Major environmental stressors include the loss of existing desert ecosystem and the utilization of non-renewable sources of energy at various development stages of DP1. Substituting natural gas-based electricity with solar power could potentially save 46% of current carbon emissions. To mitigate the land transformation impacts, construction of “close-to-nature” artificial habitats, and increased use of low-carbon fuels is suggested.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristína Kováčiková ◽  
◽  
Antonín Kazda

The paper is focused on the assessment of the environmental impacts of transport infrastructure and individual types of transport using the life cycle assessment method. The paper contains a description of the basic terminology of the problem related to transport, the environment and methods of environmental impact assessment. The paper contains analysis on monitoring carbon dioxide emissions from a global perspective as well as from a regional perspective focused on Slovakia. The aim of the paper is to create a proposal for the assessment of environmental impacts of transport infrastructure, in the form of specification of areas of assessment for selected types of transport with a focus on carbon dioxide emissions. Using the knowledge and principles of the life cycle method, a proposal for relevant indicators and a proposal for a comprehensive assessment of the impacts of selected types of transport, focused on carbon dioxide emissions, is created in the paper


AMBIO ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 316-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elias Papatryphon ◽  
Jean Petit ◽  
Sadasivam J. Kaushik ◽  
Hayo M. G. van der Werf

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