Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
3.
E
NVIRONMENTAL AND
E
CONOMIC
A
SSESSMENT
M
ETHODS
In the industrial areas analysis, the relationship between industry and its local
environment misses a main dimension of sustainable development: the environmental
protection, that is the connection between products and pollution phenomena linked to them.
The main purpose of a sustainable development consists in granting a high quality level
of life to all people, by taking less natural resources and using them as efficiently as possible.
In other words the energetic resources management needs measures and means related to
industrial systems eco-efficiency.
The environmental and economic assessment methods let the industries analyse the
environmental matters considering not only the production but also the resources that is
possible to re-use and save (energy, materials, water, natural resources).
The decision-taking processes in the environmental field depend on the purposes to be
attained, as those purposes determine the demands which to answer to, the actions to
undertake and the analytical and procedural means to use [12].
A large number of instruments have been created as methodological aid for strategies and
techniques of environmental management. The choice of the most appropriate instrument
depends first of all on the object to be studied, on the purpose of decision process, the space
and time context of the project, the available information about environment impacts, and on
the doubts about costs and benefits. Anyway, a unique method to establish the most
appropriate instrument does not exist, therefore often multiple instruments with the same
technical aids and the same information are used in an integrated way. Life Cycle Assessment
and Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA) are the major instruments, which emphasise environmental
and socio-economic aspects in order to make the best choice.
3.1. Life Cycle Assessment
Life cycle assessment
(LCA) is the broadest indicator and an internationally standardized
method (ISO 14040 and ISO 14044). It not only evaluates the impact on climate change, but
also other impact categories such as acidification potential, eutrophication potential, ozone
depletion potential, and ground level ozone creation. For each of these impact categories, the
product or system is evaluated over its complete life span, from the extraction of raw material
and manufacturing, to the use of the product by final consumers and end-of-life processes like
recycling, energy recovery, and ultimate waste disposal. The ISO standards provide robust
and practice-proven requirements for performing transparent LCA calculations. Moreover,
one can make use of extensive databases containing life cycle profiles of many goods and
services, as well as many of the underlying materials, energy resources, transport systems,
etc. Nevertheless, LCA calculations remain very complex [13].
In order to achieve the established purposes in a transparent and comprehensible way, it
is necessary to take into consideration and describe the following elements:
•
The function unit: measurement of input and output flow of the product system;
•
The product system: an ensemble of processes linked by flows of matter, energy,
wastes;
