Perú LCA: launching the Peruvian national life cycle database

Abstract

Worldwide environmental concern has led to an increase in demand for life cycle–related data. In fact, growing complexities in global value chains generate the need for accurate and consistent data from different geographies. In this context, joint efforts of UN Environment, the Peruvian Ministry of the Environment (MINAM), and the Peruvian LCA and Industrial Ecology Network (PELCAN), a research group from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (PUCP), have derived in the creation of Perú LCA, the Peruvian national life cycle database. The Perú LCAwebpage, which was launched officially on May 23 2019, is hosted at www.perulca.com. The contents of the webpage are focused on three main topics linked to Life Cycle Thinking. In the first place, the web contains basic information on the functioning of life cycle assessment (LCA) and its utility at a policy and corporate level. The purpose of this first section is to provide the general public with life cycle information and indicate how the results of LCA studies can be applied on daily activities. A second section is linked to the database containing process LCA datasets. The objective is that these unit processes will be linked to different sectors of the Peruvian economy. For now, four different sectors have been developed. On the one hand, with the support of UN Environment, three strategic sectors for Peru have been included in the database: (a) hydropower plants (Verán-Leigh and Vázquez-Rowe 2019), (b) landfills (Ziegler-Rodriguez et al. 2019), and (c) refinery products. On the other hand, with the support of ecoinvent®, in the frame of the SRI project, PELCAN and CIRAD (France) developed over 50 datasets linked to the fishing and aquaculture sectors in Peru (Avadí et al. 2019). These datasets include not only fishing and aquaculture activities but also fish processing for direct or indirect human consumption (namely fishmeal and fish oil). All these datasets, that have been constructed using the EcoSpold format and have been subject to a peer review process, are expected to be of utility for national and international LCA practitioners that require specific information regarding the Peruvian economy. In a further process, current efforts are linked to fulfilling the requirements for Perú LCA to be a node interconnected with the Global LCA Database (GLAD) platform. Finally, a third block of life cycle–oriented content is linked to the development of the environmental matrices for the Peruvian economic input-output LCA (EIOLCA). Two environmental matrices have been initially uploaded and linked to the Peruvian EIOLCA web tool, with the support of Carnegie Mellon University: greenhouse gas emissions and water withdrawals. The environmental information uploaded in the Perú LCA web, which is of open access, is expected to increase in years to come thanks to the direct feed of future research projects that are aimed at gathering data for other sectors in the Peruvian economy.