Revised dynamic climate change impact assessment for life cycle assessment through delay factors expressions

Abstract

Dynamic Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) ranges in temporal complexity, with fully dynamic approach requiring full life-cycle chronologies for both foreground and background systems. For instance, LCAs based on Environmental Product Declaration (EPDs), required by the French RE2020 regulation, are partially dynamic, since only the foreground timeline is available. The goal of this research is to provide a user-friendly and rigorous method to conduct partially dynamic LCAs for climate change impact based on EPDs. Delay factors are built as coefficient depending on the time distribution of emissions, to define the dynamic characterization factor as a function of the static one. Compatibility constraints between static and dynamic imposes an observation time T equal to the sum of the Life Cycle Duration (LCD) and the Time Horizon of the Impact (THI). Literal mathematical expressions of delay factors and their behaviors are provided for Global Warming Potential (GWP) and Global Temperature Potential (GTP). The application scope of these delay factors covers all greenhouse gases (GHG) and large temporal range of LCD and THI. A case study based on three background products and randomly generated foreground emissions shows that the RE2020 regulation dynamic factors overestimate benefits obtained by delaying emissions compared to present method. This happens because the method ignores compatibility constraints between static and dynamic approaches and because it does not differentiate delay factors for distinct GHGs. However, delaying emissions reduces GWP but still raises GTP, questioning the use of GWP as a dynamic indicator, as it may falsely suggest a declining impact when it is actually increasing.

Keywords

Dynamic life cycle impact assessment / integration time / environmental regulation / carbon storage / global warming potential / global temperature potential

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