On the boundary between economy and environment in life cycle assessment
On the boundary between economy and environment in life cycle assessment
复制标题
论生命周期评价中经济与环境的边界
DOI：
10.1007/s11367-017-1398-4
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发表时间：
2018
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
S. Pauliuk
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
B. Weidema;Jannick H. Schmidt;P. Fantke;S. Pauliuk
目的：我们研究产品系统及其环境之间的边界如何在生命周期评估中被划定，并质疑两者之间严格划分的有用性和本体论相关性。方法我们将流程、活动和影响视为适用于产品系统及其环境的一般术语，并提出本体论上相关的边界是作为其他活动（经济或环境）的输入建模的流程和在特定研究中被视为最终影响的流程之间的边界，从某种意义上说，在这些影响应用于决策之前，不会考虑对产品系统的进一步反馈。利用这一概念模型，我们将生命周期影响的传统数学计算与一种新的、更简单的计算结构进行了对比，在这种计算结构中，生命周期影响直接作为Leontief逆的一部分进行计算，并行处理产品流和环境流，而无需考虑经济活动和环境活动之间的任何边界。结果和讨论我们的理论大纲和数值例子表明，从影响评估的角度来看，产品系统及其环境之间的区别和边界是不必要的，在某些情况下是阻碍的，因此可以忽略或自由选择，以反映特定生命周期评估（LCA）研究的有意义的区别。我们表明，我们提出的计算结构与LCA建模的当前实践向后兼容，同时允许在影响评估中包含从环境到经济以及内部不同影响类别之间的反馈循环。结论本文提出的LCA计算结构有助于对环境与经济之间以及不同环境机制之间的反馈回路进行一致、明确和透明的建模。明确和透明的建模，将经济和环境信息结合在一个共同的计算结构中，促进了不同学术领域之间的数据交换和再利用。
PurposeWe investigate how the boundary between product systems and their environment has been delineated in life cycle assessment and question the usefulness and ontological relevance of a strict division between the two.MethodsWe consider flows, activities and impacts as general terms applicable to both product systems and their environment and propose that the ontologically relevant boundary is between the flows that are modelled as inputs to other activities (economic or environmental)—and the flows that—in a specific study—are regarded as final impacts, in the sense that no further feedback into the product system is considered before these impacts are applied in decision-making. Using this conceptual model, we contrast the traditional mathematical calculation of the life cycle impacts with a new, simpler computational structure where the life cycle impacts are calculated directly as part of the Leontief inverse, treating product flows and environmental flows in parallel, without the need to consider any boundary between economic and environmental activities.Results and discussionOur theoretical outline and the numerical example demonstrate that the distinctions and boundaries between product systems and their environment are unnecessary and in some cases obstructive from the perspective of impact assessment, and can therefore be ignored or chosen freely to reflect meaningful distinctions of specific life cycle assessment (LCA) studies. We show that our proposed computational structure is backwards compatible with the current practice of LCA modelling, while allowing inclusion of feedback loops both from the environment to the economy and internally between different impact categories in the impact assessment.ConclusionsOur proposed computational structure for LCA facilitates consistent, explicit and transparent modelling of the feedback loops between environment and the economy and between different environmental mechanisms. The explicit and transparent modelling, combining economic and environmental information in a common computational structure, facilitates data exchange and re-use between different academic fields.
DOI：
10.1377/hlthaff.2010.1279
发表时间：
2011-05
期刊：
Health affairs (Project Hope)
影响因子：
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作者：
Sheffield P;Roy A;Wong K;Trasande L
通讯作者：
Trasande L