Jane Powell

Approaches to valuation in LCA impact assessment

One of the major problems with the future development of lifecycle assessment is the difficulty in converting lifecycle inventory results into environmental impacts, owing to problems associated with the interpretation and weighting of the data. The four main valuation approaches: distance-to-target, environmental control costs, environmental damage costs and scoring approaches are assessed and the individual methodologies evaluated. In conclusion it is considered that in a country which has clear, up-to-date, politically acceptable emission standards, a distance-to-target valuation system maybe acceptable. However, these circumstances are likely to be rare, and the choice of standards arbitrary and not scientifically based. Therefore a better choice is probably environmental damage costs, provided suitable economic damage figures are available.

Comparison of Eco-Industrial Development between the UK and Korea

The application of eco-industrial development (EID) has attracted increasing attention worldwide leading to diverse implementation strategies of EID including eco-industrial parks and industrial symbiosis. As eco-industrial developments have resulted in varying levels of success it is necessary for new EID programmes to understand the lessons from both the successful and less successful earlier cases. This study has been undertaken to compare the implication of the National Industrial symbiosis Programme (NISP) in the UK, regarded as an active EID case, with the Korean eco-industrial park scheme as a newly implemented one. The two EID models were analysed with a framework centred on three practical aspects: the underlying approach to EID, the organisational framework and the operational framework. Comparing the two models based on the three aspects, this study suggests several implications for the implementation of EID in Korea, including business centred approach, expanding EIPs to regional EID, standardising operational framework and developing innovative synergy generation tools.

Integrating Life Cycle Assessment and Economic Evaluation

Making choices on the basis of environmental assessment techniques such as life cycle analysis (LCA) requires a valuation of the impacts. A mature approach for doing this is economic valuation in which money values are ascribed to environmental and social costs associated with alternative products, processes or policies. In this chapter economic valuation is applied to a case study of waste management options including landfilling, incineration and recycling. The results show that the environmental costs of waste management options are specific to location, technology and material. Recycling is shown to be clearly beneficial in most cases.

Building Futures: Managing energy in the built environment

1. Energy use in the built environment 2. Reducing energy demand 3. Lifecycle energy and carbon in buildings 4. Energy performance gap 5. Retrofitting buildings 6. The Passivhaus energy efficiency standard 7. Ventilating the building stock 8. Building futures