Methodology
The project will use a whole systems approach to develop a life cycle methodology for an integrated environmental and economic analysis of carbon intensity of different industrial systems. This will involve both environmental and economic aspects of carbon footprints and embodied carbon, enabling estimation of “carbon added” and “valued added” at each stage of the supply chain.
A general LCA database and modelling framework will be developed that could be used by any industrial sector as well as by policy makers. Although the emphasis of the project is on carbon-equivalent estimations, the methodological developments will not be limited to carbon alone but will also enable estimations of other environmental impacts. This is particularly important when assessing different options to ensure that carbon inventory is not reduced at the expense of other environmental impacts.
The methodology for estimating the economic impacts along the supply chains will entail assigning values to the flows of materials and energy along the supply chain, both as a result of investment and operating costs. This will enable the identification of low and high value adding activities and processes and their relation to environmental impacts. In addition, the project will investigate the options for, and the associated costs of, carbon mitigation measures. Such an insight would be particularly useful to those companies becoming involved in emissions trading.
The methodology will also incorporate suitable optimisation techniques to enable identification of optimum material, product and technological options that would lead to a low-carbon economy. To enable this, a flexible and robust software platform will be developed, allowing simple as well as sophisticated modelling and estimations, depending on the end-user needs and application.