Westchester Green Town Conf 2011 03 17 Life Cycle Wiegman

Wiegman Life Cycle Analysis Primer www.linkedin.com/in/etothefourth slide 1

Here in Westchester County, many municipalities have already or are
currently conducting greenhouse gas emissions inventories of their
governmental operations and facilities, including 7 municipalities doing so
with an ARRA grant by sharing the services. Having this data as a baseline
strengthens future grant and assistance applications.


Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University compared the impact of “foodmiles” (a measure of how far food travels between its
production and the final consumer) with the impact of what kind of food we eat, regardless of where it is grown. The surprising
conclusion is that just one day during which we replace red meat and dairy with chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet has
a much greater emission reduction impact than a week of eating strictly local food. The researchers found that “on average, red
meat is around 150% more [greenhouse gas]-intensive than chicken or fish. Thus, we suggest that dietary shift can be a more
effective means of lowering an average household’s food-related climate footprint than ‘buying local.’”[41]

Source for the information used in this slide deck: Chapter 8, Energy in the Cycle of Material, from Blockstein/Wiegman, The
Climate Solutions Consensus (2010, Island Press) www.eoearth.org/article/Climate_Solutions_Consensus


Consider the resources required to make a simple t-shirt from the extraction of raw materials, such as growing cotton, to the
resources consumed during its use and discard.


All the steps in the delivery of any service or manufactured good are necessary and interconnected from initial production to
sales to end user.
Figure 8.2 {Life cycle management roles in a t-shirt organization}
All functions in an organization play an important role in life cycle management. The figure shows examples of how different
departments in an organization can contribute to the overall life cycle management program. The t-shirt ideas here are merely
illustrative and only the tip of the iceberg of all the life cycle opportunities that could be examined and connected to each other.
Source: Adapted from [34]

We can manage product or service life cycles through assessing the life cycle impacts.

Life cycle assessment — often abbreviated LCA and also termed “life cycle analysis,” “cradle-to-grave- analysis,” or “material-flow
analysis” — is the study and valuation of the environmental impacts of a specific product or service made necessary by its
existence. In other words, we should study and quantify both the process of how a product is created and the impact of using
and disposing of the product itself. Environmental management standards used by many industry sectors are now beginning to
require such life cycle assessment, or to stress the benefits of voluntary compliance. The main goals of life cycle thinking are to
reduce a product’s resource use and emissions to the environment as well as improve its socioeconomic performance
throughout its life cycle. Such thinking may create links between the economic, social, and environmental dimensions within an
organization and throughout its entire value chain. [35]


Figure 8.1 {Life cycle thinking applied to a t-shirt}
Meet the Connect the Dots t-shirt company. A product system, or life cycle, can begin with extracting raw materials from natural
resources in the ground and generating energy. Materials and energy are then part of production, packaging, distribution, use,
maintenance, and eventually recycling, reuse, recovery, or ﬁnal disposal. In the case of a simple t-shirt, the stages involve a wide
variety of impacts due to fertilizer used to grow the cotton, dyes and water used to manufacture the shirt, and bleaches and
detergents used by the owner to wash the shirt. Source: Adapted from [26] and [34]


Charles Hall and his colleagues at SUNY-ESF write, “We believe . . . net energy analysis offers the possibility of a very useful
approach for looking at the advantages and disadvantages of a given fuel and offers the possibility of looking into the future in a
way that markets seem unable to do.” [15] Figure 8.3 depicts the energy return on investment for a typical oil well.
Figure 8.3 {A simple EROI of oil well}
@fc:An energy return on energy investment (EROI) analysis for an oil well would include the cost of the capital and materials
needs to create and maintain the well, as well as the more obvious energy costs for transporting the crude, refining it,
transporting the finished product, and mitigating the emissions upon its combustion. Source: [4]
The energy return on investment (EROI) value is a ratio and therefore has no specific dimension. When we use the EROI, we
have to decide whether by-products (or coproducts) of the energy conversion process belong on the top or the bottom of the
fraction. In the case of some energy systems, for example, ethanol production, the EROI result will be very different, depending
on whether we consider the coproduced energy as a positive output—to be added to the numerator, on top, because it can be
used “as is” without further conversion and it increases energy return—or a negative input—to be added in the denominator
because it needs to be disposed of at some added energy cost and it shrinks energy return. In these cases, an alternative is to
compute the net energy value in a system. For example, the production of ethanol creates not only liquid ethanol fuel but also
usable animal feed and solid fuel that have energy value too.


Every barrel of oil delivered to your home requires two additional barrels be consumed in the extraction, reﬁning, and
distribution process.


Figure 8.5 {Primary Energy Use versus Biomass Energy Production in the US}
Annual fossil and nuclear energy consumption in the United States is now greater than all biomass growth over the entire US
territory. The left bar shows the relative quantity that each major energy source contributes in the United States per year, for a
total of 105 EJ in 2003. The right bar shows an estimate of annual biomass production over the entire country in a year. Over
three-fourths of the biomass is committed already for food, feed, paper, ﬁber, or lumber or is stored as roots or is otherwise
inaccessible. The “food and feed” sector is heavily subsidized by fossil fuel use in agriculture, so expanding production there under
our current practices would accelerate fossil fuel consumption before increasing biofuel potential. And one-half of the remaining
biomass is locked up in sparse vegetation not practical to harvest. So the “harvestable” biomass for energy that is not already
being used for biofuels may only add up to 2% or 3% of US energy consumption today. Source: [32]


So where do we go from here?


Here is a typical street light pole. I took this photo on my block in Croton. Conservation is different from and complementary to
efficiency. Conservation is carpooling to work: If 2 people share the ride that is 50% less gasoline. Efficiency is driving a Prius. If
a Prius gets 40 mph, that is 30% more efficient than a typical car. But combining conservation AND efficiency is dynamite!


Table 8.5 shows some current EROI values. Note the huge drop in energy return on US gas and oil production over the seven-
decade time. Note also that the energy return on thin-film photovoltaic modules is only slightly lower that on nuclear power—
without taking any of the actual economic costs of each into account.
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Climate_Solutions:_Chapter_8

The energy return on investment (EROI) value is a ratio and therefore has no specific dimension. When we use the EROI, we
have to decide whether by-products (or coproducts) of the energy conversion process belong on the top or the bottom of the
fraction. In the case of some energy systems, for example, ethanol production, the EROI result will be very different, depending
on whether we consider the coproduced energy as a positive output—to be added to the numerator, on top, because it can be
used “as is” without further conversion and it increases energy return—or a negative input—to be added in the denominator
because it needs to be disposed of at some added energy cost and it shrinks energy return. In these cases, an alternative is to
compute the net energy value in a system. For example, the production of ethanol creates not only liquid ethanol fuel but also
usable animal feed and solid fuel that have energy value too. The total value of the net energy gain or loss in a system can be
calculated as follows, which lets us avoid choosing whether a by-product is a gain or loss:
Equation 4: Net energy value (NEV) = Energy output - Energy input = (Energy in liquid ethanol + Feed by-product + Solid fuel
by-product) - (Energy needed to product ethanol)
Net energy computes as an absolute value with a specific dimension, such as Btu per gallon (Btu/gal) in the case of ethanol or
gasoline. One British thermal unit (Btu) is small unit of energy equal to 0.293 Watt-hours.
Equation 5: Energy payback time (EPBT) = (Energy input of up-front one-time costs)/(Energy output) = Btu/(Btus per year)
where energy input is the up-front indirect energy cost of creating a system, which is divided by the energy output, which is
usually written as the useful energy (or power) output per unit of time, for example, Btu/year.
For example, for in the realm of photovoltaic technologies, the EPBT approach helps us compare the payback time for two
different kinds of solar electric panels, if we know the indirect upfront “embodied” energy costs of producing the system. The
Energy input for crystalline silicon PV modules is 5,600 kilowatt hours per peak kilowatt hour power output of the module and
for thin-film copper indium diselenide (CIS) modules is 3,100 (in the same units). So the new CIS modules take less energy to
produce. Given that the sun’s energy shining on two panels is going to be the same, 1,700 ( in the same units), we can see that
the thin-film modules has a payback of 1.8 years versus 3.3 years for the silicon based modules. In reality, the actual net power
performance of the panels is about 80% of the original due to system losses to the power after it leaves the module (line loss,
inverter operations, etc.). So the energy payback times become 2.2 years for the thin-film and 4.1 years for the silicon modules.
Now, here is the interesting part. Both these technologies have an expected life of 30 years. So now we can compute the energy
return on energy investment as follows, and learn that the newer thin film module will have an EROI twice as high as the older
silicon technology.
EROIsilicon = 30 years/4.1 years = 7
EROIthin-film CIS = 30 years/2.2years = 14

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Climate_Solutions:_Chapter_8


{Ch08 box} Zero Energy Housing
The Beddington Zero Energy Development, or BedZED, is the United Kingdom’s largest eco-village. All the homes built at
BedZED are zero–fossil energy galleried apartments. Eco-construction and developing green lifestyles based on integrating work
and living areas with transit hubs can be easy, accessible, and affordable and can provide a good quality of life. For example, the
heating requirements of BedZED homes are about 10% that of a typical home. The housing development is one of the most
coherent examples of sustainable living in the United Kingdom. Initiated by BioRegional, BedZED was developed by the Peabody
Trust in partnership with BioRegional Development Group and designed by Bill Dunster Architects. Located in Wallington, South
London, BedZED comprises 100 homes, community facilities, and work space for 100 people. Residents have been living at
BedZED since March 2002. Dunster and his team designed these homes as a pilot project integrating sustainable technologies.
The BedZED monitoring results from the BedZED's ﬁrst year of occupation show that building performance and transport
patterns have been very much as expected. Table 8.3 shows BedZED comparisons with the national average for space heating
and hot water, with new homes built to year 2000 building regulations in brackets. [1]
{INSERT HERE: Table 8.3 BedZED home energy reduction through sustainable design }


Life cycle analysis can be extended beyond measuring the energy flows into measuring the money flows over time. Adding a cost
analysis component over a life span of a facility can produce some surprising results. The Whole Building Design Guide program
finds that 92% of the total cost of a building over its 30 year life is the human cost of the personnel salaries, while design,
construction and maintenance are only 8% of the life cycle costs. That is a powerful argument for designing and operating healthy,
efficient, and comfortable buildings in which to work and live!


A Holiday Example: Over 40% saved!
In 2001, then Croton-on-Hudson’s then Village clerk Peggy Keesler generously donated a 30 foot fir tree to the Village to be replanted from her
yard to the parkway on Benedict Boulevard at South Riverside Drive. Every year our Village staff decorates this tree with seasonal holiday lights.
The string of incandescent bulbs took a beating from the elements and required repair and numerous replacement bulbs. In fall 2009, Croton’s
public works foreman, Thomas Giglio, set out to find better looking lights to replace the old strings. Mr Giglio discovered the village could purchase
1,800 light emitting diode (LED) lights for $1,700. Of the total, 1,600 are used on the tree with 200 as spare light in reserve. Mr. Giglio ordered a
special mix of colored bulbs that added white lights to the traditional red, green, and blue. These LED lights have more durable housings, do not use
fragile bulbs, and consume a tiny fraction of the electricity of the incandescent bulbs. The parkway has two power outlets. Due to LED efficiency, all
the new light strings could be plugged into a single outlet, leaving the second one open for a menorah. Mr Giglio notes, “A typical C7 incandescent
lamp uses 5 watts for a total of 8000 watts of power as opposed to the new L.E.D. lights, which only use 1.4 watts per bulb for a total of 2100
watts of power.” Therefore, in 2009, the village staff was able to decorate the tree with more lights and add a menorah, all while cutting costs for
this one activity by over 40% since last year.
Outdoor Lighting (Holiday Lights Benedict Blvd.)
2007 (energy cost from line 4.11 on Table 2 of Croton GHG)
$491
2008 (estimated cost of electricity)

$500
Cost of new LED lights

$1700
Annualized cost of LED light (10 year lifespan)

$170
2009 (estimated electric bill of 1,600 new LED lights)

$125
New annual cost

$295
Savings (each year)

$205

41%


“In a world in which no biological ecosystem is free of human influence and no
industrial ecosystem is free of biological influence, it is appropriate to abandon the
ar:ficial division between the two frameworks and develop a new synthesis—Earth
system ecology—as the logical construct for all of Earth's ecosystems.”
—Thomas Graedel, 1996


Westchester Green Town Conf 2011 03 17 Life Cycle Wiegman

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