Quantifying the environmental implications using LCA

Kontakt: Raül López i Losada (raul.lopez_i_losada@cec.lu.se), PhD student, Centre for Environmental and Climate science

Keywords: Life Cycle Assessment, sensitivity analysis, agriculture, trade

In the Land4Biomass project at CEC we focus on the challenges and opportunities linked to deriving biomass for biofuels from agricultural land in Sweden as a climate change mitigation measure.

In my research, I focus on quantifying the environmental implications of agricultural intensification resulting from economic policy promoting biomass for biofuels. I first translate alternative policy scenarios into future implications for Swedish farming regions using Agent-Based Modelling, and then apply LCA methods to identify best-performing strategies from an environmental perspective.

I would like to team up with a MSc student interested in performing a sensitivity analysis of the influence of trade choices in the LCA results of my latest work. You can expect to test different assumptions, in particular with regard to the origin of crops produced abroad to compensate displaced production in Sweden when introducing biofuel crops.

This is the right opportunity for you if you want to improve your knowledge of LCA methodologies and get some applied experience using LCA-related tools and databases.

In this project, you can expect to:

  • Get familiarised with LCA methodologies and how they can be coupled to Agent-Based Models to evaluate future scenarios
  • Understand the impact of trade in the system expansion approach commonly used in LCA and dissect underlying assumptions
  • Extensive use of LCA software tool SimaPro and Ecoinvent databases
  • There is room to identify and test additional underlying assumptions proposed by the student.