LCA of energetic biomass utilisation: current projects and new developments

Discussion forum on Life Cycle Assessment
April 23, 2012, Berne-Ittigen (in English)

Dear colleagues with an interest in Life Cycle Assessment,

We kindly invite you to the 47th discussion forum on Life Cycle Assessment.

In the last years, the use of biomass for energy purposes, such as electricity, heat, and transport services, has been seen as a promising option to reduce the use of non-renewable energy sources and the emissions of fossil carbon. However, LCA studies have shown that the energetic use of biomass also causes impacts on climate change, and, furthermore that different environmental issues arise, such as land use and agricultural emissions. While biomass is renewable, it is not an unlimited resource. Its use, to whatever purpose, must therefore be well studied to promote the most efficient option with the least environmental impacts.

Consequently, there is a need for up-to-date life cycle inventories of biomass and its energetic use to provide such studies with best available data. This is the focus of a range of projects financed by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE), which are presented in this discussion forum. The inventories developed in those projects will be published to a great extent in June in the new version of ecoinvent (www.ecoinvent.org). Some of the inventory data are already now freely available in EcoSpold format and can thus be used by LCA practitioners (http://www.lc-inventories.ch).

In the 47th discussion forum current developments of LCA studies in the field of energy crops, biogas production, biomass combustion and biofuels will be presented. We invite all LCA researchers, practitioners and all people interested in energetic biomass utilisation to hear about the results from the latest studies. The forum will as usual also offer the opportunity for short presentations on the topic.

We look forward to meeting you in Berne-Ittigen


The organizers of LCA Discussion Forum DF47:
Matthias Stucki (ESU-services), Mireille Faist Emmenegger (EMPA) & Sandra Hermle (SFOE)

Programme

Download:    DF47-Energetic Biomass-Programme.pdf