Application and refinement of territorial life cycle assessment to the calculation of the carbon footprint and the normalization factors of Galicia

Resumo

The present thesis has been built around the territorial LCA framework, applying and improving this innovative methodology to obtain the carbon footprint and the normalisation factors of all Galician consumption and production activities. In this thesis, the location and characteristics of the region under study are presented first, followed by an overview of the LCA methodology, and more specifically of the territorial LCA approach. Then, several individual studies of Galician based products (either produced or consumed in the region) are presented, which are later on used to obtain the main outcomes and of this work, the Galician carbon footprint and normalisation factors. Galicia is an Autonomous Community located in the north west of Spain, having particular demographic, climatic and economic characteristics. The Galician government owns certain political competencies, such as environmental protection. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a methodology to assess the environmental impacts of a product, process or service throughout its entire life cycle, i.e. from the extraction of raw materials to the end of life. This LCA framework can be adapted to apply to territories. Territorial LCA is an approach developed by Eléonore Loiseau and colleagues, which can be used to obtain the environmental impacts linked to all the consumption and production activities of a certain region. To do so, inventory data needs to be obtained for all the activities occurring within the area under study. The territorial LCA approach has been used and adapted in this document, to calculate the Carbon Footprint (CF) of all Galician consumption and production activities, and also several other midpoint indicators, which are the basis for the calculation of the Galician normalisation factors. Thus, the first step to apply territorial LCA to Galicia was to gather inventory data of the consumption and production activities taking place within the area. To do so, several LCA studies of individual products produced and consumed in Galicia were carried out within the framework of this thesis. More specifically, two studies of Galician products (milk and canned tuna) were carried out, both of them linked to the traditionally relevant primary sector. Moreover, a study of an imported product consumed in Galicia was also carried out: the Ecuadorian banana, the second most consumed fruit in the region, which was cause major environmental degradation. After these first LCA studies of Galician based products, an approach based on territorial LCA was used to obtain the CF of all the Galician consumption and production activities. To do so, activity descriptors were combined with inventory data to build Galician inventories. Once the CF of all Galician consumption and production activities was calculated, hotspots were identified and suggestions were made to lower the GHG emissions of both the Galician consumption and production. Once these first CF results were obtained, an attempt was made to refine them, also aiming at the simplification of the methodology for future CF calculations in Galicia or in other regions. An approach based on the Galician Input Output (IO) matrix was found to be the best option to obtain reliable CF results with low calculation efforts. The results obtained with the new approach did not differ much from those obtained in the previous study, even though they were differently split into activities. It was concluded that the new approach could simplify the territorial LCA approach in CF calculations of regions having IO tables. Last, the inventory data obtained following the territorial LCA approach was used again to calculate the Normalisation Factors (NFs) of the consumption and production activities in the region. The study was, to the best of our knowledge, the first application of this approach to calculate normalisation references, and also the first calculation of those references at the subnational level.