Threefold sustainability impact assessment method comparison for renewable energy value chains

ABSTRACT

There is a variety of different methods for carrying out sustainability impact assessments of energy value chains. The different methods can use the same, or similarly named, indicators, but the methods make different assumptions about the system boundaries and differ in the purpose of the assessment, and this can lead to confusion when communicating the results of different studies. A method expansion of Sustainability Impact Assessment (SIA) was developed and tested to allow comparison of environmental indicators of energy use and generation, energy balance and greenhouse gas emission as calculated according to three different methods: (1) direct value chain environmental impacts (referred to as SIA in this paper), (2) direct plus indirect impacts following a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, and (3) a method based on European Sustainability Criteria (ESC) for solid biomass. The Tool for Sustainability Impact Assessment (ToSIA 2.0) was used for this method expansion. Indicator values following the three different approaches were calculated for a typical Nordic bioenergy harvesting chain producing forest wood chips. The indicator values for SIA, LCA and ESC are made comparable side by side, and give thus more insight on the difference and purpose of the three different methods when applied to the same harvesting chain.

KEYWORDS:

• ToSIA
• lifecycle assessment
• obligatory European sustainability criteria
• solid biomass
• value chain
• indicator

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by research of the INFRES project (www.infres.eu) and has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2012-2015). Special thanks go to Tim Green for English language review. Asst. Prof. Dimitris Athanassiadis's contribution to the paper has been partly financed by the Bio4Energy research project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Seventh Framework Programme [Grant no. 311881]. Asst. Prof. Dimitris Athanassiadis's contribution to the paper has been partly financed by the Bio4Energy research project.