Session: Energy

Using the Life Cycle Approach for climate change strategies and voluntary GHG emission offsetting
Marc Binder,^* PE Americas
Peter Koeberle, PE International
Harald Florin, PE Americas
Michael Faltenbacher, PE Australia

Confirming the existence of global climate change is no longer the issue. How to counter it – at the global, national and company level – is now rapidly becoming the major issue, and the real challenge for organisations to solve.

While regulatory government measures such as caps can have a significant impact, there are additional measures, many of them voluntary, which are being implemented internationally with great success. With regard to the life cycle of a product the operations of a specific company may only cover single phases, most likely during the manufacturing. Therefore it only contributes to a certain amount to the product life cycle GHG emissions.

To avoid shift of GHG emissions between life cycle phases and business decisions which may result in trade offs with regard to other environmental impacts, the life cycle approach is used to assess the overall emissions to ensure that the up- and downstream processes and its emissions are considered putting the specific GHG emissions of a company into perspective.

This approach also ensures a coherent GHG reporting according to the different scopes (direct, energy production and indirect) as defined in the World Business Council for Sustainable Development “A corporate accounting and reporting standard” and in the new ISO standard 14064 “Green House Gases”.

The first part of presentation will show a modular, flexible approach which can be tailored for corporations of all sizes, private individuals, single processes or products as well as public and private events to not only assess and offset GHG but also how this approach can be used for the identification of GHG reduction potentials. It features a staged procedure containing the following steps

- Status quo using the life cycle approach

- Optimization of the own operations

• Analyzing, balancing and monitoring of material and process emissions using the life cycle approach which include upstream emissions,
• Benchmarking to reduce the energy consumption as well as reduce the in-house and up stream emissions (material and process).

- Approach/ strategies how to compensate the remaining GHG emissions

The second part will show how this approach can be realized in an efficient way using existing tools like LCA in combination with tools supporting EMS systems and internal documentation systems which are already in place.

The third part will then discuss how these tools complement each other by presenting selected examples.

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